taxonomy-steward

name	taxonomy-steward
description	Design a balanced schema for a directory and keep the vault's whole taxonomy healthy — the governance layer above folder-curator / domain-triage / frontmatter-enrichment. Mints a schema against the entire existing set, and mitigates decay: tag explosion / singleton fat-tail, near-duplicate & case-collision tags, enum/value sprawl, orphan fields, base bloat, naming drift, cross-schema divergenceUse when adding a directory/domain schema, auditing vault/tag/schema health, fixing tag explosion, consolidating or pruning tags, rebalancing fields, or promoting a tag to a field. Do NOT use to apply a schema to a file (frontmatter-enrichment), type a file (folder-curator), route to an entity (domain-triage), or manage memory (hindsight). Biases: measure first, controlled vocabulary over folksonomy, DRY, never auto-apply.
pipeline-status	new

Taxonomy Steward

The gardener for the whole classification system. Two jobs: mint a well-balanced schema for a new directory in the context of every existing schema, and keep the taxonomy healthy as it drifts — tags, fields, enums, and naming. Measure-first, human-approved, migration-aware.

Operating principles

• Measure before you touch. Run scripts/schema_health.py and read the numbers; opinions about tag sprawl are worthless next to the notes:tag ratio and the singleton count.
• See the whole set at once. A schema is never designed alone — it's designed against the base + all siblings. Minting one is an occasion to rebalance all.
• Controlled vocabulary beats folksonomy at scale. Recurring, enumerable things become facets (typed fields with a value set), not freeform tags.
• DRY across schemas. A field that recurs in N schemas belongs in the base (hoist); a base field only one schema uses belongs there (push-down).
• Every change is a migration. Renaming a key, merging a tag, or moving a field rewrites existing notes. Weigh the blast-radius; propose, get approval, migrate in one coherent pass.
• Never auto-apply. Output a review artifact (diagnosis + diff + migration plan). Humans approve.

Quick navigation

Task / signal	Read
The named health phenomena + their fixes (the catalog)	references/health-phenomena.md
How to measure (ratios, fill-rate, sprawl)	references/measurement.md
Mint a schema / rebalance the set (the workflow)	references/rebalancing-workflow.md
Sharp edges (migration, lossy merges, recency window)	references/gotchas.md
Health-report output shape	assets/report-template.md
Measurement engine	scripts/schema_health.py

Where this sits

folder-curator (types) · domain-triage (routes to entity) · frontmatter-enrichment (fills values) — these operate within the schemas. taxonomy-steward defines and rebalances the schemas themselves. It reads the same contracts (the vault frontmatter-category-map.json + per-dir .curator/taxonomy.yaml frontmatter: blocks) and, when a change is approved, drives the migration via frontmatters set / apply-base across affected files.

The two modes

1. Mint a schema for a directory. Analyze the dir's content + the full existing schema set → propose the smallest schema that fits, reusing base/shared fields, and flag any field that should be hoisted (recurs elsewhere) or any emergent tag pattern that should become a facet. See rebalancing-workflow.md.
2. Health pass (audit + rebalance). Run the metrics, match findings to the phenomena catalog, and produce a prioritized, migration-costed remediation plan (merge tags, prune singletons/orphans, consolidate enums, normalize naming, hoist/push-down fields, reconcile diverging conventions).

Procedure (both modes)

1. Measure. schema_health.py <dir> (whole vault or a subtree). For emergent patterns, add --recent-days 14 to see what's new this window vs the established set.
2. Inventory the schema set. Read the base + every extension so decisions are made against the whole.
3. Diagnose. Map each metric to the catalog (references/health-phenomena.md): ratio→explosion, near-dups→merge, low fill→orphan, dual-case→naming drift, enum count→sprawl, high fill in one schema→hoist.
4. Decide local-fit vs global-rebalance (references/rebalancing-workflow.md).
5. Write the review artifact (assets/report-template.md): findings, proposed schema/diff, and a migration plan with blast-radius counts.
6. On approval, migrate in one pass (frontmatters set/apply-base; update the contracts), then re-measure to confirm.

Out of scope

• Applying an existing schema to a file / backfilling one note → frontmatter-enrichment.
• Typing a file (category/kind) → folder-curator. Routing to an entity → domain-triage.
• Memory bank mechanics → hindsight.
• Authoring a brand-new domain's contract from scratch (first .curator/taxonomy.yaml + TRIAGE + bank) → domain-triage / folder-curator. This skill refines and rebalances schemas that exist (or mints one against them), it doesn't stand up a domain's routing.
• Editing the frontmatters tool → its own repo (~/code/frontmatters).