Workspace Doctor

Use this skill when the task is to inspect the current workspace and explain what is missing or degraded.

Required Capabilities

• local file access
• shell or command execution
• ability to summarize structured diagnostics

If the agent cannot inspect local files or run commands, stop and explain that the workspace cannot be diagnosed reliably.

Procedure

1. Run docmason doctor --json.
2. Explain blockers first, then degraded conditions, then optional follow-up.
3. If the environment is not ready and .venv is absent, direct the next action to ./scripts/bootstrap-workspace.sh --yes.
   • treat the launcher as the governed cold-start preflight and bounded liveness gate for bootstrap Python selection, not as an unbounded trust of whatever python3 happens to be first on PATH
   • on native Codex, the ordinary path should not branch into manual cache probing or manual recovery before that governed launcher settles
4. Otherwise, if the environment is not ready, direct the next action to docmason prepare --yes.
   • treat mixed and degraded toolchain states as repair-needed, not ordinary ask-time ready
5. If doctor reports a control-plane blocker or pending confirmation, surface that blocker before lower-severity degraded conditions.
   • for pending native Codex host-access upgrade, direct the next action to switching the thread to Full access
   • for pending high-intrusion prepare, direct the next action to docmason prepare --yes
   • for pending material sync, direct the next action to docmason sync --yes
6. If office-renderer is blocked:
   • on macOS with Homebrew already present, recommend brew install --cask libreoffice-still or docmason prepare --yes
   • on macOS without Homebrew, recommend docmason prepare --yes or the official installer from https://www.libreoffice.org/download/download/
   • on Linux, recommend the distro package manager or official packages, then re-run doctor
7. If the normal launcher or prepare path still cannot complete honestly after the governed automatic path has already had enough access, point the deeper fallback to docs/setup/manual-workspace-recovery.md.
8. Return the diagnosis to the main agent without mutating workspace state.

Escalation Rules

• doctor is read-only. Do not silently switch into setup or repair work from inside this workflow.
• If multiple blockers exist, preserve their ordering and do not hide the highest-severity one behind a degraded follow-up item.
• Do not downgrade a live control-plane confirmation blocker into a generic degraded suggestion.

Completion Signal

• The workflow is complete when the main agent has a clear blocker and degraded-condition summary plus the next obvious action.

Notes

• doctor is read-only.
• Treat unsupported platforms, unsupported Python versions, and missing editable-install availability as blockers.
• Treat only a self-contained prepared toolchain as ready for ordinary workspace asks.
• Treat missing uv, stale adapters, and an empty source corpus as degraded conditions rather than hard blockers.
• On native Codex/macOS, treat missing LibreOffice as a blocker only when the workspace currently depends on Office rendering. Missing Homebrew alone is informational.
• On native Codex/macOS, treat Default permissions versus Full access as an explicit first-class boundary; a per-command Yes popup is not equivalent to switching the thread to Full access.
• Outside that native machine-baseline policy, treat missing LibreOffice as a blocker only when the current corpus contains PPTX, DOCX, or XLSX files.
• For Claude Code or another compatibility host, keep any higher-access fallback wording brief and host-generic instead of copying the Codex-specific wording.
• A stale or missing generated adapter matters only when the current flow depends on that adapter surface.