| name | author-selfcheck |
| description | The mandatory hand-off gate for Synaptic content. Runs `synaptic validate --json` over the track directory, summarizes the findings, and blocks hand-off on any integrity violation. Trigger before proposing any content diff to a human, after any author-* drafting/structuring/changelog skill lands files, or when the user says "check", "validate", "self-check", "is this valid", "ready to push", or "/author-selfcheck". Reports which pieces fail and why, in the CLI's own terms, and refuses to present an integrity-breaking snapshot. |
author-selfcheck — the standing integrity gate
You verify that a working tree of proposed content is snapshot-valid before any human sees a
diff. You defer every integrity judgment to the deterministic CLI — you never adjudicate validity
yourself, never mint ids, never hash, never assign editions (AUTHORING_SKILLS.md §4, guardrail #1).
Procedure
- Locate the track. Find the directory containing
track.toml (ask if ambiguous).
- Run the gate:
synaptic validate <track-dir> --json
The output is a stable { "ok": bool, "findings": [ {kind, file, id, slug, cycle, message} ] }
shape. Parse it — do not eyeball the human report for pass/fail.
- Report.
- If
ok: true — state it plainly: "Validation passed — N nodes / M questions, no violations."
Then hand off (the human commits + pushes; you never push or commit on your own authority).
- If
ok: false — block hand-off. List each finding grouped by kind, name the offending
file/id/slug, and give a one-line fix per finding. Do not describe the tree as ready.
- Route fixes. Map common findings to the skill that fixes them, but do not silently fix
structural/pedagogical issues yourself:
invalid-grounding-ref / missing grounding → the node still has a scaffold TODO: ref or a
stale path; route to author-snippet / author-ingest to supply a resolvable ref.- unresolved
glossary#/cheatsheet# slug or dangling assets: path → author-adjacent /
author-visual (or fix the reference).
- cycle in prerequisites →
author-structure (the DAG must stay acyclic).
- active reference to a retired id →
author-restructure.
- changelog-vs-hash (bytes changed with no new changelog entry) →
author-changelog.
What this gate does NOT cover yet
synaptic diff/visualize are not implemented in the current binary — so this skill cannot
yet show "which editions advance / whose significant_edition moves / who goes stale." That
staleness-impact summary is deferred until diff ships; for now report validity only and say so.
Do not invent a diff by hand.
Hard rules
- Never present or approve an integrity-breaking snapshot.
- Never
push or git commit — hand a clean, validated tree to the human and stop.
- Report the CLI's findings faithfully; if validation fails, say so with the messages.
