If interviews are puzzles, what proof would you actually accept instead?

Genuine question because I'm trying to figure out what "proof of skill" even means anymore.

We all know the HackerRank grind doesn't map to real work. I hear a lot of stories about "engineers" with years of experience but can't do easy problems. But companies still use it because it's SOME signal and they need to filter 500 applicants somehow.

So what would you accept as an alternative? Not theoretically. Like if you were the hiring manager tomorrow and had to fill a mid-level role, what artifact or demonstration would make you think "yeah this person can do the job"?

Here's what I've been thinking:

• A recorded code review where you walk through someone else's PR and explain what you'd change and why (I recorded one for a friend's open-source PR last month and it helped me articulate tradeoffs better)
• A short doc explaining a technical decision you made (I wrote up a one-pager on why we went with eventual consistency over strong consistency in a past project and the tradeoffs involved)
• A GitHub history that shows consistent small contributions (I've been making regular PRs to a couple of open-source repos I use at work, mostly bug fixes and small features over the last year)
• A resume that actually explains impact in a way that sounds like you've done the work (I ran mine through Resumeworded to make sure my phrasing is specific, which made the impact clearer)

The problem is none of this scales the way a timed test does. You can't throw 500 work samples at a hiring committee and expect them to read all of it.

But would any of this move smaller companies or teams that actually care about fit? Or is it just wishful thinking and the algo gauntlet is here to stay?

What proof would companies trust if LeetCode didn't exist?