Validation Repair

Use this skill when the knowledge base needs validation, repair, or publication follow-through.

This is an internal follow-on workflow behind knowledge-base-sync. Ordinary users should not need to invoke it by name.

Required Capabilities

• local file access
• shell or command execution
• ability to read machine-readable validation reports

If the agent cannot run docmason validate-kb or inspect the reported errors, stop and explain that reliable repair is not possible.

Procedure

1. Use staging as the default validation target unless the task explicitly says otherwise.
2. Run docmason validate-kb --json.
   • keep DocMason workspace commands sequential inside one live workspace session
   • do not overlap validate-kb with sync, status, retrieve, or trace against the same workspace while leases may still be active
3. Inspect the blocking_errors, warnings, and per-source reports in knowledge_base/<target>/validation_report.json.
4. Fix the staged source or interaction-memory files that caused the failures:
   • missing or stale knowledge.json
   • missing or malformed summary.md
   • unresolved citations
   • unresolved artifact_id citations
   • invalid related-source links
   • missing or malformed artifact_index.json
   • missing or malformed pdf_document.json
   • missing or malformed semantic_overlay/*.json
   • invalid render_page_span, artifact refs, or sidecar asset references
   • placeholder or incomplete bilingual content
5. Rerun docmason validate-kb --json until the result is valid or warnings.
6. When staged validation is no longer blocking, return control to the main agent so it can rerun docmason sync --json for final publication.

Escalation Rules

• If validation reveals a capability or evidence gap that cannot be repaired honestly, stop and surface that blocker instead of weakening the quality gate.
• If a fix would require changing derived retrieval or trace artifacts directly, do not hand-edit them. Regenerate them through the supported workflows.
• If the failure is in deterministic sidecars such as artifact_index, visual_layout, spreadsheet_*, or pdf_document, repair the upstream staged source inputs or rerun the supported compiler path instead of hand-editing the derived files.
• Final publication remains a main-agent step.

Completion Signal

• The workflow is complete when validation reaches valid or warnings, or when a concrete unrecoverable blocker has been surfaced to the main agent.

Notes

• Blocking errors prevent publication.
• Warnings are acceptable only when the evidence manifest records partial extraction failure clearly and the surviving evidence still exists.
• Do not hand-edit derived graph, retrieval, or trace files unless you are explicitly regenerating them through the supported DocMason commands.