Audit — docs, whole project

Documentation audited for defects, against evidence — not a content inventory, not a style pass. Every finding carries a file:line and the command that proves the contradiction.

In this tree's 2026-08-15 cold audit, roughly six of about thirty-five findings were doc-vs-reality drift even though docs were only a secondary lens. This skill makes them the primary one.

Which audit is this?

Scope is an argument, not a separate skill. Default is the whole project. Pass recent — /audit-docs recent, or "audit the recent docs" — to scope to work since a base ref. The methods are identical either way; only what they are pointed at changes.

Not this skill

• Did the change land where it actually executes? -> landing-check. This skill hunts defects; it does not verify a deployment reached the live file. The two are complementary and neither replaces the other.
• Is this diff correct? -> /code-review.
• Did the code I just wrote run? -> coding-conventions (fires on its own).
• One narrow mechanical check -> the specialist owns it and this audit CALLS it rather than re-deriving: cve-audit, history-leak-scan, local-secrets-manage, data-integrity-audit, path-quirk-audit, shell-portability, seed-control, determinism-guard, milestone-track.

Protocol

The depth lives in shared reference files, in the audit skill's references/ directory. Read each as you reach its step; this file holds only the order and what is different about this mode.

Enter cold. If this session already worked on the project, spawn a fresh auditor per fanout.md and hand it only what that file permits — never session belief, never "this part is known-good". If the session is genuinely fresh, you ARE the cold auditor. Cold means unbiased, not amnesiac: read the project's own docs, as claims under test.

1. Resolve scope. Per scoping.md.

FULL scope (default). Build the manifest before spawning anyone. Enumerate with git -c core.quotepath=false ls-files — not a $-anchored extension grep, which silently drops every non-ASCII filename (this cost a real audit its most important document on 2026-08-21). Reconcile the count against a second enumeration. This working directory may contain several git repos rather than being one: do not silently pick one, and do not sweep them all under a single manifest without asking.

RECENT scope (when recent is passed). Resolve the base ref deliberately and say which you chose. Use three-dot git diff base...HEAD — two-dot picks up base-branch drift and is the classic wrong answer. Include uncommitted and untracked work (git status --porcelain, git diff, git diff --staged; untracked files need git add -N to appear in a diff at all — there is no --include-untracked flag). Rank by relative churn, not absolute: Nagappan & Ball (ICSE 2005) measured absolute churn at R^2 = 0.052 and size-normalized churn at R^2 = 0.811.

Then walk the blast radius — mandatory. Take the changed set, walk reverse dependencies (import graph, call graph, git log -G over changed symbols), and pull unchanged callers into scope. A changed function's untouched callers are exactly where a broken contract surfaces. Without this, "recent audit clean" means only "the diff reads fine".

Recent-scoped reports state their own blind spots — what was not swept, and that they cannot see pre-existing defects in untouched code or a latent bug the change newly made reachable.

2. Every file in scope is assigned to a worker, and every exclusion is listed with its reason. The coverage map is computed from the manifest and the workers' reconciled search trails, not narrated from memory. "38 of 41 files swept, 3 vendored" is checkable; "comprehensive sweep" is not.

Fan out. Per fanout.md. Sonnet workers, eight maximum across all levels including any delegates. Pre-register the acceptance rubric before any worker output exists. Workers do NOT vote or cross-review — they report independently and the session model adjudicates on evidence.

Sweep. docs-methods.md — D1 through D8, after the automated pass, in the cost order that file specifies.

Verify. Every crit and high is reproduced by the session model itself, with the command and its real output. A zero-result search is a claim, not a fact — cross-check load-bearing negatives through a second implementation before believing them.

Report. Exactly the contract in reporting.md.

Wait for approval, then fix in the stated order, verifying each fix by running the thing. Re-run the automated pass afterwards and report before/after.

Notes for this mode

Two rules from that file are worth surfacing here, because both cut against instinct:

File age is not staleness. Tang et al. (ACM TOSEM 2024) tested the "untouched for N days" heuristic: it flagged 70.3% of screenshots, of which a 154-item sample contained 8 genuinely outdated. An old date is a reason to check, never a finding.

Hunt wrong before missing. Practitioners rate a wrong code comment (49% important) at roughly twice a missing one (28%). Do not spend the sweep counting undocumented functions.

Rules

• The findings pass changes NOTHING. No drive-by fixes.
• Never delete anything you did not create this session without asking.
• Never install new scanners without asking; never certify compliance.
• Never invent a number, measurement, or timestamp. Run date before writing any timestamp. Missing data is reported as missing.
• Coverage is proven by the manifest, not by how thorough it felt. A method not run is "not swept", never "no findings".

ASCII-only markdown (rule added 2026-09-23)

Every .md file this skill creates or writes to gets ASCII characters only (bytes 0x00-0x7F) in the text you add. No exceptions for headings, tables, quotes, names or pasted tool output.

• Dashes: - (never an en or em dash). Arrows: -> and <-. Quotes: straight " and '. Ellipsis: .... Math: x, +/-, <=, >=, ~. Separators: -, ; or |. No emoji, no check-mark glyphs (use [x] and [ ]), no accented letters: transliterate names and quoted text.
• Check before saving. In a git repo, git diff -U0 -- <file> | grep -v '^+++' | grep '^+' | grep -nP '[^\x00-\x7F]' must print nothing. For a new or untracked file, grep -nP '[^\x00-\x7F]' <file> must print nothing.
• Leave non-ASCII in text you did not write. Earlier entries of an append-only record stay byte for byte; converting an existing file is a separate, explicit job.