This was a deliberate change. When there's no user-defined verification process, verification is implicit when a Stage becomes healthy for the first time following recent promotion. Things have always worked this way. It's just that we didn't used to make a record of it and now we do. Having that record simplifies a lot of other things.

I actually find it nice that these show up in the UI as well. It makes it more clear that some kind of verification did indeed take place.

I was caught off guard by this change, but can understand how it could be useful.

That said, if my Stage doesn't have verification defined, I wouldn't expect entries in my verification tab. And the empty columns don't really display any useful information. At the least, I suggest we offer a checkbox to filter out these "implicit" verifications.