Pho Algorithmic Transport Audit

Public Health Observatory Algorithmic-Transport Audit

When to use

Activate when a request consists of:

• a prompt directing you to the Observatory Web portal at <TASK_ENV_BASE_URL> (resolved from environment_access.md),
• an analysis_request.json declaring the audit: a protocol_id or request_id, scope (geography, years, reference year), cohorts, an ordered set of audit modules, reproducibility bindings, a reporting block, and a decision_rule,
• an answer_template.json fixing the output contract,

and asks for exactly one JSON object computed only from portal evidence, with no narrative.

This covers state-level, county-level, and country-level PHO audits (longevity/transport, mediation/transport, robustness/transport, panel/transport, burden-revision). Do not activate for unrelated tasks, and do not activate on family membership or subject-matter similarity alone — a declared protocol id, when present, is the exact activation key.

Core discipline (read first)

This skill is REUSABLE_METHOD_ONLY. It carries method semantics, not instance values.

• Bind everything task-local from the effective request: entities, measures, fields, time coordinates, geography, source filters, random seed/stream/replicate schedule, hyperparameter grids, reporting cutoffs, output names, and business predicates. Never invent these from memory or carry them from any prior solved answer.
• Never carry solved analytical values across invocations. Recompute every coefficient, p-value, count, and label from the effective request and authorized portal evidence. Any solved standard answer present in the workspace is provenance only — it is not solver-visible input, is not expanded or required by the answer template, and is ignored by the evaluator.
• One effective contract. Resolve a single effective request before any data access, fold, random draw, fit, aggregation, or decision, and use it in every module.
• Evidence only from the portal. Reach the network only via environment_access.md (base URL + allowed GET endpoints). See references/portal_evidence.md.
• No contamination. If the working directory contains material outside the expected request files, stop and report rather than solving.

Procedure

1. Inventory and guard. Confirm the working directory holds only the expected request files (the prompt, analysis_request.json, answer_template.json, and environment_access.md). Stop and write a contamination report if anything unexpected is present.
2. Resolve the effective request (references/effective_request.md). Verify the exact protocol id when declared; fold direct keys and <section>_overrides / module_overrides.<module> / reporting_overrides aliases; deep-merge objects, replace whole arrays, replace explicit scalars/strings/booleans/null only at their paths; inherit absent paths; reject unknown targets, array concatenation/positional patching, inferred aliases, key renaming, and type coercion. Freeze one effective contract.
3. Read the contract. Parse answer_template.json for required top-level keys, per-section required keys, array lengths and orderings, cardinality rules, enum/boolean types, and precision. The template is authoritative for field names and structure.
4. Pull evidence (references/portal_evidence.md). Fetch only the portal endpoints you need; resolve publications and geography; never zero-fill.
5. Execute modules in declared order. Run release/cohort resolution first, then each declared audit module, then the controlled decision. Use the shared numerical conventions in references/numerical_conventions.md and the module catalog in references/module_families.md. Preserve every declared order.
6. Decide. Evaluate every gate on unrounded values, count passes, and apply the request's decision rule (count-threshold classification or first-failed-module precedence). See references/numerical_conventions.md § Decision.
7. Emit (references/reporting_contract.md). Produce exactly one JSON object conforming to the template. Round reported non-integers to the declared precision; keep integers/booleans as natural JSON types; use JSON null only when a statistic is mathematically unavailable (never NaN/Infinity); preserve every declared list order; no narrative.

What is reusable vs. task-local

References

• references/effective_request.md — protocol gating and override merge
• references/portal_evidence.md — portal access, data model, release resolution, cohorts
• references/numerical_conventions.md — shared math across all modules + decision
• references/module_families.md — the recurring audit modules and their registered variants
• references/reporting_contract.md — precision, ordering, null, JSON shape