Health Check

/health-check — 8-Dimension Project Assessment

What

Runs a data-driven health assessment across 8 dimensions, each graded A-F with the specific data points that produced the grade, and rolls them into a GPA. Gut feeling is not a grade: every dimension uses MCP tools or CLI commands, and every grade below A comes with specific, prioritized, effort-estimated fixes — "add test classes for OrderService, PaymentProcessor, ShippingCalculator" is actionable; "improve test coverage" is not.

This skill owns the canonical grading system for the kit. The full rubrics, GPA scale, and report template live in references/grading-rubric.md — load that file when running an assessment.

Tone is diagnostic, not punitive: a C grade is an improvement path, not a failure.

When

• Onboarding to an unfamiliar or new project — set the baseline
• "How healthy is this?", "grade this project", "codebase review", "report card"
• Pre-release quality gate, or monthly/quarterly maintenance review
• After a cleanup sprint (/de-sloppify) — re-grade to show progress
• Tech-debt prioritization — lowest grades get the next sprint's attention

How

Step 1: Choose Scope

Step 2: Run the Dimensions

Read references/grading-rubric.md for the grade thresholds, then collect data per dimension. For deep code-quality dimensions, delegate to the code-reviewer agent with the code-review skill.

Step 2.5: Triage Gate (before any grade is assigned)

Detector output is evidence, not a grade. Pass every finding through this gate first — it is what stops a noisy count becoming a wrong letter.

1. Read `summary`, not the violation list. summary.byId is complete even when the list is truncated. Never sample a truncated list and extrapolate.
2. Drop `suppressed`. Record the count and summary.suppressionConfig in the report so suppression stays visible.
3. Set aside `medium`. These are review items, not grade inputs. Summarise them by category; do not fix or count them.
4. Grade `high` only. These are wrong regardless of context.
5. Check invariants. If a signal contradicts something the target repo's CLAUDE.md documents as deliberate, the invariant wins — verify before grading.
6. Read before asserting. Never describe a finding you have not opened. If you cannot open all of them, report the ones you did and say so.

Fill in the triage table from references/grading-rubric.md as you go. If the table cannot be filled, the dimension is not ready to grade.

Step 3: Grade and Aggregate

Apply the rubric thresholds exactly — never grade on a curve ("pretty good for a project this size" is how standards erode; 15 warnings is a C regardless of project size). Convert to GPA (A=4.0 … F=0.0), averaging only the dimensions actually graded — a dimension marked "Not assessed" is excluded from the GPA, never scored as an F.

Step 4: Report

Produce the report card from the template in references/grading-rubric.md: grades table with key findings, overall GPA, and priority recommendations — each with named types/files, priority order, and effort estimates. If a previous report exists, append the trend comparison table.

Example

User: /health-check

Claude: Running full 8-dimension assessment...

| Dimension | Grade | Key Finding |
|-----------|-------|-------------|
| Build Health | A | 0 errors, 2 warnings |
| Code Quality | B | 3 high-confidence findings in 4.2K lines; 31 medium untriaged |
| Architecture | A | Clean direction, 0 cycles |
| Test Coverage | Not assessed | Integration-driven suite — structural metric invalid |
| Dead Code | B | 5 unused methods (79 convention-discovered, not counted) |
| API Surface | B | 2 overexposed service types |
| Security | A | 0 vulnerable packages |
| Documentation | D | 12/30 public APIs documented |

Overall GPA: 3.1 (B) — averaged over 7 graded dimensions.

Triage: 44 AP005 raw → all log-and-rethrow wrappers (medium); 2 AP004 real.

Priority: (1) `SystemSeeder` → `TimeProvider`, ~15 min; (2) XML docs on the 8
endpoint classes, ~1 day; (3) review the 44 catch blocks or suppress by path.

Related

• references/grading-rubric.md — canonical rubrics, GPA scale, report template
• /de-sloppify — cleanup pipeline for the issues a health check surfaces
• /security-scan — deep 6-layer scan behind Dimension 7
• /code-review — per-change review (this skill grades the whole project)
• /verify — pass/fail pipeline for a change set, not a graded assessment