gaia-meta-audit

Build a prioritized queue of Gaia skills or catalog items that need focused review.

This skill is intentionally scoped to triage, not repair. It reads broadly, flags what matters, ranks it, and stops. Focused correction belongs in /gaia-audit. Keeping these two passes separate prevents a single meta-audit from becoming an unbounded edit session.

Preparation

Before scanning, load and re-read these sources so your flags reference the correct rules:

• registry/gaia.json — canonical graph; generic nodes + their evidence
• registry/named-skills.json — named-skill index
• registry/named/** — individual named-skill markdown files (YAML frontmatter is load-bearing)
• registry/real-skills.json — catalog entries
• docs/skill_source_contributions.md — contribution lineage
• META.md §1 (Taxonomy), §4.1 (Origin), §6.2 (Semantic Fusion) — re-read before every scan; rules drift between releases

Generics are rank-less (starless). Generic nodes carry no level, no demerits, and no stars — those live only on named skills (2★–6★). A generic's effective rank is the highest star among its named children. Generic nodes hold capability-level (Class A) evidence inherited by all named children; implementation-specific evidence stays on the named skill. Never call gaia dev calibrate on a generic.

Scan for red flags

Work through these checks in order. Stop when you have enough candidates to fill a meaningful queue — do not perform every focused audit inline.

P0 — Critical integrity violations

• Unsupported top-rank claim: a named skill at 5★ whose Trust Magnitude is < 250 (S-grade), or a 6★ skill that fails its branch gate — Suite 6-predicate Apex (META §4.3) or Unique 5-predicate Unique Impossible (META §4.4). TM is the sole numeric gate; there is no repository-star floor.
• Unsupported named-origin claim: origin: true on a named skill that is not the earliest (createdAt) named skill mapped to that genericSkillRef. Verify by pivoting all named skills on the generic and sorting by createdAt — only one can be origin.
• Named claim with no implementation file: links.github points to a repo root, a 404, or a path that doesn't contain a SKILL.md.

P1 — Structural correctness

• Dead evidence links: run python3 scripts/verify_evidence.py; anything that 404s is P1.
• Star Bar gap: named skills at 3★+ without a valid installer-ready links.github blob URL (META §2.4).
• Link casing mismatch: GitHub raw paths are case-sensitive. /SKILL.md vs /skill.md will 404 in CI. Standardize on uppercase SKILL.md.
• Wrong-target link: links.github resolves to a different skill's directory than the named skill claims.
• Brand-coupled generic ID: a canonical generic ID containing a product or person name (e.g. gaia-audit, gaia-meta-audit) violates META §1 — generics must be abstract capabilities. Flag for rename via gaia dev rename.
• Unbacked named star: a named skill's star is not supported by its own plus inherited evidence — judge on evidence, not on the generic's rank.

P2 — Attribution and sourcing issues

• Wrong promotedNamedSkillId: the generic's promoted pointer doesn't match the best-evidenced named child.
• Stale catalog URL: points at a directory, homepage, or path that has moved.
• Mis-attributed origin: true: per META §4.1, "lives in this repo" does not equal origin. The earliest createdAt wins.

P3 — Registry hygiene

• Broad genericSkillRef mapping: implementation skill mapped to a much larger generic when a more specific one exists (e.g. mapped to a broad 0★ generic when a narrower generic is available).
• Duplicate or superseded skills: multiple named skills from the same author or tool family doing the same thing. Flag clusters that should consolidate.
• Semantic Fusion candidate (META §6.2): two or more named skills that compose two existing generics into one orchestrated workflow. Propose a new fusion generic; do not confuse this with a top-rank (5★+ Ultimate) fusion, which is gated by Trust Magnitude (≥ 250, S-grade) and the branch predicate closure (META §4.2–4.4), not a repository-star threshold.

P4 — Documentation cleanup

• Placeholder bodies: named-skill markdown with only boilerplate ## Installation\nAdd installation instructions here. — flag for a real ## Overview.
• contributor: testuser timelines: placeholder authorship that survived intake.
• Generated-output drift: docs/ files still reference removed named claims.

Do not flag anything on rarity grounds — the rarity axis is deprecated (see CONTEXT.md § Rarity).

Audit Disentanglement & Taxonomy Standards (RFC #1809)

When queuing skills for review, categorize any candidate target against the Four-Tier Taxonomy:

• Tier 1 (Malicious / Imposter Squatter): Bad-faith aggregation, hijacking other maintainers' repos/stars, or falsified attribution. Action: Immediate expungement, blacklist.
• Tier 2 (Packaging / Install Shape Gap): Authentic concept and author lacking standard packaging or repo links. Action: Tag installable: false if ≤2★ per CONTRIBUTING §12; demote if >2★. Never purge.
• Tier 3 (Early-Stage / Under-Evidenced Stub): Authentic author, thin documentation or preliminary evidence. Action: Keep at baseline 1★ (Awakened), request doc enrichment, or tag needs-info. Never purge.
• Tier 4 (Product-Coupled / Non-Generalized): Real tool documentation needing generalization (#1766, #1801). Action: Route to generalization guidance per check_product_attribution.py.

Contributor Check: If the contributor is a known contributor, co-founder, or team member, maintainer outreach and documented audit review are required before recommending deletion. Blanket sweeps labeled under generic "imposter" headings are prohibited.

Output format

Present the queue as a table. Stop here unless the user explicitly asks to start running audits.

Priority	Target	Why review	Suggested action	Source files

Handing off to focused audit

For each accepted P0–P1 candidate, pass it to /gaia-audit as a separate focused correction. For direct registry maintenance the CLI map below covers which tool to reach for — this avoids hand-edits that skip timeline logging.

CLI reference

Mutation	Command
Generic rename (cascades prereqs + named refs)	gaia dev rename old new
Add new generic	gaia dev add "Name" --id <slug> --type basic --description "..."
Set generic prereqs	gaia dev link <id> a,b,c
Calibrate named-skill star	gaia dev calibrate <contributor/skill> 3★
Add capability evidence to a generic	gaia dev evidence <id> <url> --type <evidence-type> <typed numeric flags> --evaluator <user>
Reclassify generic type	gaia dev reclassify <id> <type>
Remove generic	gaia dev rm <id>
Change named-skill genericSkillRef	gaia dev update-named <author/skill> --generic-ref <new>
Change named-skill status	gaia dev update-named ... --status <new>
Change named-skill origin (enforces uniqueness)	gaia dev update-named <author/skill> --origin true|false
Append timeline event	gaia dev timeline <id> --action <action> --notes "..."
Named-skill level / links.github / description / body	Direct YAML edit — CLI does not expose these
Named-skill removal	Delete the markdown file — gaia dev rm is generic-only

After any mutation: gaia dev validate then gaia dev docs.

For evidence, choose the live Evidence Type from registry/schema/meta.json and provide that type's quantitative inputs (for example --citations, --stars, or --commits/--contributors). The CLI derives the row's Evidence Grade from its artifact_score and the type-specific evidence.perRowGradeThresholds. Use --trust <number> only as the legacy/fallback trustNumber input when no typed magnitude can be computed; it uses the aggregate S=250/A=100/B=50/C=20 thresholds and is not the skill's accumulated Trust Magnitude.

Common pitfalls

• Renames leave orphan docs. gaia dev rename updates node JSON and named refs but leaves stale registry/skills/<type>/<old-id>.md. Delete the orphan manually.
• Timeline entries land with contributor: unknown when the local user isn't auto-detected. Edit the JSON to set the correct username before committing.
• review/meta/* branch scope blocks docs/ paths. Apply skip-scope-check label and [skip-gen] commit tag when committing regenerated docs on a meta branch.
• Force-push doesn't always re-trigger path-filtered workflows. Manually dispatch validate.yml and python-package.yml via gh workflow run ... --ref <branch> if their checks don't appear.

Canonical worked example

PR #525 (review/meta/mbtiongson1-audit, 2026-05-30) ran every red-flag category above on 14 named skills and produced: 2 named removals (P0), 2 generic renames (P1), 1 new fusion generic via Semantic Fusion (P3), 5 genericSkillRef remaps, 7 links.github casing fixes, and 12 placeholder body backfills. Read AUDIT-mbtiongson1.md and the PR description for the full flag-to-action mapping.

Optional Semantic Meta Advisory

To assist triage queue generation, an operator may optionally run the read-only Jev advisory runner to inspect generic descriptions and vendor coupling (docs/agents/jev.md):

# Offline dry-run by default ($0 spend); add --live to query TypeSafe API
# Uses --collect-repo to inspect canonical generic nodes directly from registry/nodes/
# Supports bounded paging via --offset (default: 0) and --max-calls
python scripts/jev_advisory.py --mode meta --collect-repo --offset 0

This advisory produces triage suggestions only. It never mutates registry files, never calibrates stars, never skips deterministic audit checks, and hands off ambiguous items to worker-luna.