Mycelium canvas-health

Lint canvas files for staleness, missing fields, inconsistent evidence types, and orphaned references. Run periodically or before major transitions.

install

source · Clone the upstream repo

git clone https://github.com/haabe/mycelium

Claude Code · Install into ~/.claude/skills/

T=$(mktemp -d) && git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/haabe/mycelium "$T" && mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills && cp -r "$T/.claude/skills/canvas-health" ~/.claude/skills/haabe-mycelium-canvas-health && rm -rf "$T"

manifest: .claude/skills/canvas-health/SKILL.md

source content

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
```
/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

Load project configuration:
- Read
```
diamonds/active.yml
```
  for
```
product_type
```
  and
```
project_type
```
- Read
```
.claude/engine/canvas-guidance.yml
```
  for required/recommended/optional files per project type
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
```
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
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
```
diamonds/active.yml
```
  confidence
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)
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
Check evidence freshness (evidence decay):
- Scan all
```
provenance
```
  blocks across canvas files for
```
validated_at
```
  or
```
captured_at
```
  timestamps
- Compare against staleness thresholds from
```
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
```
/user-interview
```
  or
```
/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
```
/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
```
/metrics-pull
```
  .").
Also check per-adapter freshness: for each adapter file in
```
.claude/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.

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
```
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
```
canvas/scenarios.yml
```
does NOT exist but project_type requires it (per canvas-guidance.yml): flag as warning

Check for boilerplate content:
- Flag canvas files where >50% of content matches the template defaults from canvas-guidance.yml
- Flag files with placeholder text ("TBD", "TODO", "fill in later", "placeholder")
Log findings to decision-log.md (MANDATORY):

APPEND a

### Canvas Health Report

entry to

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.,
```
/diamond-progress
```
) to detect health issues

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:
  - /canvas-update [file] -- [reason]
  - /interview -- [if evidence gaps found]
  - /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)