| 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
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
- 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.
- 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)
- 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.
- Inventory the schema set. Read the base + every extension so decisions are made against the whole.
- 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.
- Decide local-fit vs global-rebalance (references/rebalancing-workflow.md).
- Write the review artifact (assets/report-template.md): findings, proposed schema/diff, and a
migration plan with blast-radius counts.
- 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).
