Canvas Health

Canvas Health Check

Audit the canvas knowledge base for quality, consistency, and completeness. The canvas is Mycelium's source of truth -- its quality directly determines agent output quality (Raschka: "context quality = model quality").

When to Use

• Before any diamond phase transition (called automatically by /mycelium:diamond-assess)
• After a period of inactivity (>7 days since last canvas update)
• When agent output quality seems to degrade
• After onboarding a new team member (ensures canvas is self-explanatory)
• Proactively: run periodically to catch silent drift

Workflow

1. Load project configuration:

   • Read .claude/diamonds/active.yml for product_type and project_type
   • Read ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/engine/canvas-guidance.yml for required/recommended/optional files per project type

2. Check file presence:

   • For each required canvas file: does it exist? Is it non-empty (>50 bytes)?
   • For each recommended canvas file: does it exist? Flag as gap if missing.
   • Report: N/M required files present, K recommended files missing

3. Check _meta blocks:

   • For each existing canvas file, check for _meta: block
   • Flag missing _meta blocks
   • Flag last_validated older than 30 days (staleness warning)
   • Flag version field missing or at 0

4. Check confidence consistency:

   • Gather all confidence: values across canvas files
   • Flag confidence > 0.5 with evidence_type: speculation or evidence_type: assumption
   • Flag confidence > 0.7 with fewer than 2 evidence sources
   • Flag confidence values that haven't changed across git history (anchored confidence anti-pattern)
   • Cross-check against .claude/diamonds/active.yml confidence

5. Check evidence type consistency:

   • Every canvas file with evidence_type: should have it set to one of: interview, survey, analytics, experiment, speculation, assumption, mocked_persona
   • Flag unknown evidence types
   • Flag evidence_type: interview when only mocked personas were used (honesty check)
   • Every source_class: value should be one of: external_human, external_data, internal_stakeholder, internal_desk, internal_simulated — flag unknown values
   • Flag internal_stakeholder evidence with confidence > 0.5 that has validated: false or no validated field — stakeholder beliefs should not carry high confidence without external validation (Brown: organizational mythology)
   • Flag L2 opportunity canvas entries where ALL evidence is internal_stakeholder or internal_desk — no external human voice heard (Spool: secondhand research insufficient)

6. Check for orphaned references:

   • Canvas files that reference other canvas files (e.g., jobs-to-be-done.yml referencing opportunities.yml) -- verify the referenced file exists
   • Diamond references to canvas files -- verify they exist

7. Check evidence freshness (evidence decay):

   • Scan all provenance blocks across canvas files for validated_at or captured_at timestamps
   • Compare against staleness thresholds from ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/engine/evidence-decay.md:
     • User needs/interviews: 90 days
     • Competitive intelligence: 90 days
     • Strategic assumptions: 180 days
     • Technical feasibility: 120 days
     • DORA/delivery metrics: 30 days
   • Flag evidence past threshold as warning; past 3x threshold as critical
   • Suggest refresh actions: "Evidence in [file] is [N] days old. Run /mycelium:user-interview or /mycelium:log-evidence to refresh."
   • Note: corrections and patterns do NOT decay — process learnings are timeless

7b. Check metric snapshot freshness (v0.14):

• If .claude/jit-tooling/active-metrics.yml exists, for each status: active source:
  • Find the newest snapshot in .claude/evals/metrics/<source>/.
  • If >7 days old: warning ("[source] snapshot is [N] days old — run /mycelium:metrics-pull to refresh").
  • If >30 days old: critical (evidence this stale is worse than no metric reference — anchors old state).
  • If missing entirely: info-level ("No snapshots yet for [source]. Run /mycelium:metrics-pull.").
• Also check per-adapter freshness: for each adapter file in ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/jit-tooling/metrics-adapters/, if last_known_working is >180 days old, flag as warning suggesting regeneration via metrics-adapters/GENERATING.md.
• Source: v0.14 metrics harvesting. Metric evidence has a faster staleness curve than interview evidence because the underlying data changes continuously.

8. Check cross-reference integrity (leaf lifecycle):
   • Every GIST idea with source_leaf_id → verify that leaf exists in opportunities.yml (and not in archived-solutions.yml without the GIST being shelved)
   • Every service entry with gist_id → verify that GIST idea exists
   • Every threat model entry with solution_id → verify that solution exists
   • Every go-to-market feedback_loop entry with source_leaf_id → verify leaf exists
   • Flag broken references as warnings ("Zombie Solution" anti-pattern)

8b. Check scenario health (Hoskins):

• If .claude/canvas/scenarios.yml exists:
  • Every scenario must have all four Hoskins elements populated (persona, means, motive, simulation) — flag incomplete scenarios
  • Every scenario must have lifecycle.born_at set — flag if missing (orphan scenario with no origin)
  • Every scenario with confidence > 0.5 must have evidence sources — flag unsupported confidence
  • Every scenario referenced in lifecycle.designed_against[] → verify the solution exists in opportunities.yml or gist.yml
  • Every scenario referenced in lifecycle.tested_against[] → verify test date is not in the future
  • Flag scenarios with status: draft older than 30 days (stale draft — either promote or discard)
• If .claude/canvas/scenarios.yml does NOT exist but project_type requires it (per ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/engine/canvas-guidance.yml): flag as warning

9. Check for boilerplate content:
   • Flag canvas files where >50% of content matches the template defaults from ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/engine/canvas-guidance.yml
   • Flag files with placeholder text ("TBD", "TODO", "fill in later", "placeholder")

9b. Check docs/ health (added 2026-05-08 with the docs restructure):

• Audience markers: every public doc under docs/ (excluding docs/receipts/cases/ which carry frontmatter) must have Audience, Time to read, and Last updated lines in the first 5 lines. Flag missing markers.
• Stub freshness: docs containing is forthcoming are Phase 2 stubs. Flag any stub with Last updated older than 60 days — Phase 2 may have stalled.
• Length budget compliance: per docs/README.md and docs/contributing/style.md:
  • README ≤ 250 lines (hard cap; soft cap 200)
  • docs/<page>.md ≤ 400 lines (hard cap; soft cap 250)
  • docs/receipts/cases/<case>.md ≤ 250 lines (hard cap; soft cap 150)
  • Flag any file over hard cap (FAIL); warn over soft cap (NUDGE).
• Last updated freshness: any docs/ file with Last updated older than 180 days gets flagged for refresh.
• Information scent on links: scan for "click here", "see filename" patterns — these violate the scent rule. Flag for review.
• Marketing-voice scan: scan for "powerful", "comprehensive", "robust", "seamless", "best-in-class". Flag occurrences for voice review per docs/contributing/style.md.
• Receipts case frontmatter: every file under docs/receipts/cases/ must have YAML frontmatter with the required fields (id, date, contributor, contributor_link, project, mechanism_or_status, commits, subclass). Flag missing fields.
• Highlights rotation cadence: if README's "How Mycelium got smarter" section has not changed in >90 days (check git log for last commit touching that section), flag as a rotation candidate per docs/contributing/style.md#highlights-rotation. The flag is informational; rotation is a /mycelium:framework-health decision, not an automatic move.

10. Log findings to .claude/harness/decision-log.md (MANDATORY):

• APPEND a ### Canvas Health Report entry to .claude/harness/decision-log.md
• Include: overall status (HEALTHY/WARNINGS/CRITICAL), stale evidence found, refresh recommendations
• Use these words explicitly when applicable: "stale", "evidence", "refresh", "interview", "validate"
• Example: "Evidence in opportunities.yml is stale (183 days old, threshold 90). Refresh needed: run fresh interviews to validate opportunity assumptions."
• This log entry is essential for auditability and for downstream skills (e.g., /mycelium:diamond-progress) to detect health issues

11. Generate health report:

• Summarize findings by severity: critical (required file missing), warning (stale, inconsistent), info (recommended file missing, meta block absent)

Output Format

## Canvas Health Report

Overall: [HEALTHY | WARNINGS | CRITICAL]
Files checked: N canvas files, M diamonds files

### Critical Issues
- [required file missing or empty]

### Warnings
- [stale confidence, inconsistent evidence, anchored values]

### Suggestions
- [missing recommended files, absent _meta blocks]

### Coverage Summary
| Category | Required | Present | Gap |
|----------|----------|---------|-----|
| Discovery (L0-L2) | N | M | ... |
| Solution (L3) | N | M | ... |
| Delivery (L4) | N | M | ... |
| Market (L5) | N | M | ... |

Recommended actions:
  - /mycelium:canvas-update [file] -- [reason]
  - /mycelium:interview -- [if evidence gaps found]
  - /mycelium:log-evidence -- [if confidence unsupported]

Theory Citations

• Karpathy: Knowledge base health checks and auto-maintained indexes
• aiops3000: Anti-drift through externalized knowledge, versioned reference artifacts
• Raschka: "Context quality = model quality" -- canvas quality determines agent output quality
• Gilad: Confidence must be evidence-backed (confidence consistency checks)
• Torres: Evidence triangulation (evidence type consistency)