Audit

stardust:audit

One URL in. One scored, evidence-bound audit out.

audit looks at an existing website from three perspectives — design (brand tensions + concrete improvement opportunities), SEO/technical, and LLM/AI-search visibility — measures Core Web Vitals, and synthesizes everything into a seven-dimension scorecard plus a prioritized findings ledger that tells the owner what to improve to generate a better business outcome. The report is also the natural seed for a redesign: its findings feed stardust:uplift's improvements list and stardust:direct's Phase 2.5, and it closes with uplift-shaped redesign directions so "run stardust:uplift" is the obvious next step.

Opinionated defaults

• Multi-page by default — stardust:extract <url> --cap 8 (home + seven IA pillars) unless --single or --pages overrides.
• Non-interactive — the audit never asks questions. Every assumption it makes instead is recorded in audit.json#assumptions and stated in the report's executive summary.
• Evidence-bound — every claim cites a measurement, a T-* tension id, a check result, or a screenshot observation. A claim with no citation does not ship.
• No fabricated data — a measurement that could not be taken is reported as not measured (<reason>), never estimated silently. An estimate, where reasoned, is labeled as one with its basis.
• Graceful degradation, not failure — optional capabilities (refero, marketing-skills, modern-web-guidance, PageSpeed Insights) are probed once and their absence is recorded, never fatal. See § Degradation ladder.

Inputs

• <url> — required. The site to audit. A path narrows the crawl to that subtree (extract's semantics).
• --pages <n> — optional. Override the default 8-page extraction cap (passed through as --cap <n>).
• --single — optional. One-page audit of the given URL only. The cross-page checks (duplicate titles, sitemap coverage, CTA fragmentation across pages) then run on a single page and say so.
• --deploy — optional. After the report renders, publish report.html as a single self-contained page via the DA transport (../deploy/da-deploy-protocol.md: source PUT → preview → live) and print the delivered URL. Transport only — the report never goes through deploy's section→block conversion, which would decompose the self-contained file.
• --benchmark — optional. Force Phase 5 reference benchmarking: probe the refero MCP even when the earlier capability probe was slow or ambiguous. Without this flag Phase 5 fires only when the probe succeeds quickly.

There are no other flags. Everything else is derived from the captured surface or governed by the underlying skills' contracts.

Phase 0 — Setup

1. Run the master skill's setup (../stardust/SKILL.md § Setup) — with one audit-specific carve-out: impeccable absence is a degradation here, not the master setup's hard stop. When the dep check fails, record impeccable: unavailable in audit.json#degradations and continue — Phase 2 runs without the critique/audit arms (VISION pass + accessibility fold-in still fire) and Phase 6 skips the report render; the run ends at stop condition (b) after audit.json is written.
2. Extraction freshness check. If stardust/current/ holds an extraction of the same origin less than 7 days old — origin from stardust/state.json (the site record extract stamped), recency from the newest pages/<slug>.json#_provenance.fetchedAt — reuse it and record site.extraction.reused: true. Otherwise invoke stardust:extract <url> --cap 8 (or --single / --pages <n> per the inputs). Extract owns the crawl, the screenshots, _brand-extraction.json, pages/<slug>.json, PRODUCT.md / DESIGN.md, and brand-review.html with its Tensions section.
3. Probe optional capabilities once, recording each outcome in the degradation record (audit.json#degradations):
   • marketing-skills plugin (seo-audit, ai-seo skills present?)
   • modern-web-guidance (npx -y modern-web-guidance@latest search "<query>" responds?)
   • refero MCP (attempt mcp__refero__refero_search_styles; treat a tool-not-found or timeout as unavailable)
   • PageSpeed Insights API (network-reachable without a key?)
   • rollout project (stardust/rollout/rollout.json present?)

If extract fails entirely (site unreachable, bot-management block past the headed-Chrome fallback), stop and surface extract's error verbatim — there is nothing to audit. This is the only hard stop before synthesis; see § Stop conditions.

Procedure

Phase 1 — Brand surface & tension analysis

Read stardust/current/_brand-extraction.json and stardust/current/brand-review.html § Tensions surfaced (rule catalog in ../extract/reference/brand-review-template.md § Tensions). Every fired T-* tension is candidate evidence for a finding — carry the ids forward, do not re-derive the detections.

Compute the four brand-expression measurements the report needs. Each lands in audit.json#measurements with status + method per reference/report-format.md:

• brandColorShare — brand-color share of painted pixels on the captured home screenshot. Preferred method: Playwright pixel sampling (method: "pixel-sample") — load the screenshot, sample a grid (e.g. every 8th pixel), classify each sample to the nearest palette entry within a tolerance, and divide brand-hue samples by painted (non-white/near-white) samples. When sampling is infeasible in the session, a reasoned estimate from the captured surfaces is allowed but must ship as method: "surface-estimate" with its basis — never presented as measured.
• ctaFragmentation — distinct CTA labels per equivalence bucket, aggregated from pages/*.json#ctas[].label (the same buckets that drive T-cta-vocab).
• typeScale — distinct heading sizes and scale kind/ratio from _brand-extraction.json#type.scaleAudit.
• radiusSprawl — distinct border-radius values with occurrence counts from _brand-extraction.json#motifs.borderRadius.

Phase 2 — Design & experience critique

Three passes over the captured home page (screenshot + live URL), folded into one set of design findings:

1. impeccable critique + audit. Invoke via the Skill tool using the delegation mechanic in ../prototype/SKILL.md § Invoking impeccable (Skill { skill: "impeccable:impeccable", args: "critique <target>" }, then "audit <target>" for the accessibility / responsive / performance passes). Normalize its findings into the audit's finding shape.
2. VISION pass. Study the captured screenshots directly (stardust/current/assets/screenshots/<slug>.png) and name what a design director would: dated patterns the field has moved past, hierarchy failures, missed opportunities the captured surface doesn't capitalize on. The claim discipline is absolute — every observation cites a measurement, a tension id, or a screenshot region ("home.png, hero: three equal-weight CTAs compete"). Adjectives without evidence do not become findings.
3. Accessibility fold-in. Contrast computed (WCAG ratios for the captured palette pairs in the roles they are actually used in), alt coverage from pages/*.json#media.images, landmark presence and heading order from pages/*.json#landmarks, content-free link labels (reuse T-link-content-free when fired).

Phase 3 — SEO & technical

When the marketing-skills plugin is installed, follow marketing-skills:seo-audit's methodology and normalize its issue/impact/evidence/fix items into findings. When absent, run the checks directly — they are all curl/Playwright-derivable:

Where a failure matches a rollout:baseline check id (../rollout/reference/checks.md: single-h1, title-missing, meta-description, canonical, sitemap, jsonld, img-alt, landmark-main, duplicate-title), reuse that id as the finding's evidence.ref (check:<id>) — findings recorded into a rollout ledger under a known id get picked up by the AEM autofix registry automatically.

Core Web Vitals. Measure LCP / CLS / TBT via Playwright performance APIs (PerformanceObserver for largest-contentful-paint and layout-shift, longtask entries for TBT) on two viewports: mobile (375×667, CPU throttled where the session supports it) and desktop (1440×900). When the PageSpeed Insights API is network-reachable without a key, prefer it and record method: "psi-api" (it adds field INP); otherwise record method: "playwright-lab" and say in the measurement note that lab TBT is a proxy for INP. Classify every metric against the Google thresholds tabled in reference/scoring.md § performance.

Remediation guidance. When modern-web-guidance is installed, run npx -y modern-web-guidance@latest search "<specific failure>" for each distinct failure class and cite the returned guide ids in the finding's guides[]. When absent, write the generic remediation and leave guides: [].

Phase 4 — LLM visibility

When marketing-skills:ai-seo is installed, follow its methodology. When absent, assess directly:

• llms.txt — present at the origin root?
• Answerability — does each audited page answer the question a user would ask of it ("what does this cost", "what is this") in extractable, well-structured prose — and how early on the page?
• schema.org coverage — do the JSON-LD entities cover the organization plus the page-type entities an answer engine needs for entity understanding?
• Heading-as-question coverage — what share of h2/h3 map to askable questions or scannable topics rather than slogans?
• Content depth — extractable prose word counts on key pages; specific, citable claims vs thin marketing copy.
• Key facts in crawlable text — are pricing, what-it-is, and who-it's-for stated in crawlable text, or locked in images and JS-rendered widgets?

Every Phase 4 finding names the concrete fix ("state the three price points in the pricing table as text; they currently render only inside the plan-card images"), not a category ("improve content").

Phase 5 — Reference benchmarking (optional)

Fires when the refero MCP tools are reachable — the Phase 0 probe attempted mcp__refero__refero_search_styles; --benchmark forces a re-probe. Skip gracefully when unavailable (benchmarks: { status: "skipped", reason: … }).

When available: retrieve 2–3 same-vertical reference styles, compare the audited site's brand expression (Phase 1 measurements) against what best-in-class in the category does, and cite each reference — title, URL, one line on what they do better — in the relevant design findings and in audit.json#benchmarks.references.

Phase 6 — Synthesis & report

1. Scorecard. Score the seven dimensions per reference/scoring.md — anchors first, evidence floor enforced, not-measured dimensions nulled and renormalized. Compute the weighted overall.

2. Findings. Consolidate Phases 1–5 into the prioritized ledger: P1 (actively losing business or excluding users) / P2 (material drag) / P3 (polish). Per finding: dimension, evidence (measurement / tension / screenshot / check / benchmark citation), businessImpact one-liner, concrete fix, guides[].

3. Uplift directions. Close with 2–3 redesign directions framed exactly like uplift's variant role contract (../uplift/SKILL.md § The three-variant role contract): A faithful + fixes (names the findings it resolves), B one captured-but-underused trait amplified, C cinematic (motion as identity, register suggested per ../prototype/reference/motion-registers.md § Selection heuristic). Drop B when the captured surface can't support a differentiated middle — two strong directions beat three weak ones.

4. Write stardust/audit/<domain-slug>/audit.json — schema, slug convention, and measurement rules in reference/report-format.md Part 1. Provenance _provenance first key.

5. Render stardust/audit/<domain-slug>/report.html by delegating to $impeccable craft with the brief in reference/report-format.md Part 2 — the same Skill-tool mechanic as prototype, and the same rule: never hand-template the report. Run the post-render validation checklist; on failure re-invoke craft with the specific violation. Open the result with open stardust/audit/<domain-slug>/report.html.

6. Ledger recording (rollout projects only). When stardust/rollout/rollout.json exists, record each finding into the delivery ledger via node skills/rollout/scripts/findings.mjs record with source namespace audit: — --source audit:<dimension>, --layer from the mapping below, severity carried through, --fixability normalized per ../rollout/reference/audit-sources.md § Recording an external finding. Write each returned id into the finding's ledgerId.

   audit dimension	ledger layer
   brand-expression	brand-tensions
   visual-hierarchy-craft	design-ux
   conversion-focus	content-conversion
   accessibility	accessibility
   technical-seo	seo (site-wide: cross-page)
   content-llm-visibility	ai-search
   performance	seo

7. --deploy. When passed, publish report.html via the DA transport per ../deploy/da-deploy-protocol.md — PUT the file as a single source, POST preview, POST live, verify the delivered URL returns 200 — and print the delivered URL. Transport only; never run deploy's section→block conversion on the report.

8. Chat summary. Short — the work is on disk and openable:

   audit complete — <url>
   
   Site health: <overall>/100
     <dimension>: <score>   × 7 (not-measured dimensions listed with reasons)
   
   Findings: <n> P1 · <n> P2 · <n> P3
   Top lever: <the single highest-impact P1, one line>
   
   Report: stardust/audit/<domain-slug>/report.html
   Data:   stardust/audit/<domain-slug>/audit.json
   
   Next: run stardust:uplift <url> — the report's closing directions
   are its variant briefs.
   

Degradation ladder

Probed once in Phase 0; every degradation is recorded in audit.json#degradations and rendered in the report's methodology appendix. None of these stops the audit.

Hard constraints

• No fabricated data. A measurement that could not be taken is not measured (<reason>) in both artifacts. Estimates are labeled with method + basis. This is the same discipline extract enforces against synthesis (../extract/SKILL.md § Failure modes) — fabricated audit numbers are worse than missing ones because they are actionable-looking and wrong.
• Evidence discipline. Every finding cites observable evidence: a measurement key, a T-* tension id, a screenshot region, a check id, or a benchmark URL. Uncited claims are cut in synthesis.
• Report is craft-rendered. report.html is authored by $impeccable craft against the brief in reference/report-format.md, validated afterward — never hand-templated, never hand-patched.
• Provenance is mandatory on both artifacts, per ../stardust/reference/artifact-map.md § Provenance shapes.
• Non-interactive. No questions in normal flow; assumptions are stated in the report. The only stops are the two below.
• Audit does not fix. Fixes belong to uplift (page redesign), direct Phase 2.5 (improvements list), and rollout's optimize loop (platform autofix). Audit names the fix; it never edits the site.

Stop conditions

Stop and surface only if:

(a) Extract fails entirely — site unreachable, structure unparseable, bot-management block past the headed-Chrome fallback. Surface extract's error verbatim; nothing to audit. (b) impeccable unavailable — Phase 2's critique/audit arms and Phase 6's report render require it. Per the Phase 0 carve-out, the run continues in degraded mode (VISION pass, SEO/technical, LLM visibility, benchmarks all still fire) and writes audit.json; then stop and tell the user the designed report needs the impeccable plugin — deliver the data, not a hand-templated substitute.

Everything else degrades per the ladder; the audit never stops for confirmation in normal flow.

Outputs

stardust/
├── current/                             ← from extract (reused when <7 days old)
│   ├── _brand-extraction.json
│   ├── brand-review.html                ← Tensions section = Phase 1 input
│   ├── pages/<slug>.json
│   └── assets/screenshots/<slug>.png    ← VISION-pass + report evidence figures
└── audit/
    └── <domain-slug>/                   ← hostname, www-stripped, dots → dashes
        ├── audit.json                   ← scorecard, measurements, findings[], provenance
        └── report.html                  ← craft-rendered, self-contained

stardust/rollout/optimize/findings.json  ← appended via findings.mjs (rollout projects only)

Audit writes no state.json entries — extraction state belongs to extract; audit's own artifacts are self-describing via provenance. Re-running audit against a fresh extraction overwrites stardust/audit/<domain-slug>/; ledger recordings dedupe by the ledger's own id hash.

Scope

• Audits and prescribes; never modifies the site or its redesign artifacts.
• One origin per run. Auditing a competitor set is N runs.
• The natural continuations: stardust:uplift <url> (the closing directions are its variant briefs), stardust:direct (findings feed the Phase 2.5 improvements list), rollout's optimize loop (ledger findings with known check ids autofix on AEM).

References

• reference/scoring.md — the seven dimensions, weights, observable anchors at 40/70/90, scoring procedure.
• reference/report-format.md — audit.json schema (Part 1) and the report.html craft brief + post-render validation (Part 2).
• ../extract/SKILL.md — crawl, capture, brand-surface extraction; § Failure modes for the anti-synthesis discipline.
• ../extract/reference/brand-review-template.md § Tensions — the T-* detector catalog Phase 1 carries forward.
• ../prototype/SKILL.md § Invoking impeccable — the Skill-tool delegation mechanic reused for critique (Phase 2) and the report render (Phase 6).
• ../rollout/reference/audit-sources.md — the findings-ledger normalization rules (severity, fixability) Phase 6 applies.
• ../rollout/reference/checks.md — baseline check ids to reuse so AEM autofix picks the findings up.
• ../rollout/scripts/findings.mjs — the ledger writer (record).
• ../uplift/SKILL.md § The three-variant role contract — the frame for the closing uplift directions.
• ../prototype/reference/motion-registers.md § Selection heuristic — register suggestion for direction C.
• ../direct/SKILL.md § Phase 2.5 — the improvements list audit findings feed on a subsequent redesign.
• ../deploy/da-deploy-protocol.md — the DA transport behind --deploy (source PUT → preview → live; no block conversion).
• ../stardust/SKILL.md § Setup — master-skill setup run in Phase 0.
• ../stardust/reference/artifact-map.md — provenance shapes.