---
name: feedback-verify-coverage-claims
description: Never assert a venue lacks coverage from a failed lookup — say UNKNOWN and ask the user to verify
metadata:
  type: feedback
---

When a lookup returns nothing, report it as **UNKNOWN and ask the user to check**,
rather than concluding the venue does not cover it.

**Why:** on 2026-07-29 I made FOUR wrong "not covered" claims in a single
session, every one a failed lookup rather than a real absence. The user corrected
each from their phone in seconds:

1. *"Kalshi has no Swiss match-winner series"* — queried `/series` with
   `limit=200`; `KXSWISSLEAGUEGAME` was on a later page. Paging to exhaustion
   finds **205** `*GAME` series.
2. *"Poly-US has no Swiss coverage"* — searched their catalogue for the string
   "swiss". The slug is **`swsl`**, and `/v2/leagues` returns the same 50 rows
   regardless of `limit`/`offset`, so it is never in the response at all.
3. *"Poly-US has no Brazilian events"* — passed the DIV code `'BSA'` to
   `league_events()`, which wants the SLUG `'bra'`. Got 0 and believed it.
4. *"API-Football has a 6-8% Pinnacle coverage tail"* — three of four examples
   were **postponed** fixtures (status `PST`), which have no line because there
   is no match. The real gap that day was one fixture.

The common failure is a name-based spot check returning empty, treated as
evidence of absence. It is unusually costly here because a false "not covered"
silently removes a whole league from consideration and nothing ever surfaces it.

**How to apply:**
- Enumerate a venue's own catalogue and cross-reference; do not spot-check names.
  `research/venue_coverage_audit.py` does this, and prints **UNKNOWN** rather
  than 0 when a lookup itself fails.
- Absence is only claimable from a **full listing**. Otherwise say "I could not
  find it — can you check on your phone?"
- Beware: `/v2/leagues` (Poly-US) ignores paging; Kalshi `/series` needs cursor
  paging; `league_events()` takes a SLUG not a div code; a postponed fixture
  looks exactly like a missing one.
- The user can check a venue's app far faster than I can enumerate an API. Use
  that — asking is cheap, a wrong exclusion is not.

Related: [[project-pin-coverage-and-consensus]] (the coverage numbers in it are
overstated for exactly this reason — three of the four were postponements).