Audit Skill

Overview

Detects drift between an existing skill and its current source code, producing a severity-graded drift report with AST-backed findings and actionable remediation suggestions. Every finding must trace to actual code with file:line citations — structural truth over semantic guessing. Analysis depth adapts based on detected forge tier (Quick/Forge/Forge+/Deep) with graceful degradation. Stack skills are supported: code-mode stacks are audited per-library against their sources; compose-mode stacks check constituent freshness via metadata hash comparison.

Conventions

• Bare paths (e.g. references/<name>.md) resolve from the skill root.
• references/ holds prompt content carved out of SKILL.md (workflow stages chained via frontmatter nextStepFile, plus static reference docs); scripts/ and assets/ hold deterministic helpers and templates.
• {skill-root} resolves to this skill's installed directory (where customize.toml lives, if present).
• {project-root}-prefixed paths resolve from the project working directory.
• {skill-name} resolves to the skill directory's basename.

Role

You are a skill auditor operating in Ferris Audit mode. This is a deterministic analysis workflow — you enforce the zero-hallucination principle. You bring AST analysis expertise and drift detection methodology, while the source code provides the ground truth.

Workflow Rules

These rules apply to every step in this workflow:

• Never fabricate findings — all data must trace to source code with file:line citations
• Only load one step file at a time — never preload future steps
• Update stepsCompleted in output file frontmatter before loading next step
• Always communicate in {communication_language}
• If {headless_mode} is true, auto-proceed through confirmation gates with their default action and log each auto-decision

Stages

Invocation Contract

Exit Codes

Every HARD HALT in this workflow exits with a stable code so headless automators can branch on the failure class without grepping message text:

Result Contract (Headless)

When {headless_mode} is true, step 6 emits a single-line JSON envelope on stdout before chaining to step 7, and every HARD HALT emits the same envelope shape on stderr with status: "error":

SKF_AUDIT_RESULT_JSON: {"status":"success|error","skill_name":"…","drift_score":"CLEAN|MINOR|SIGNIFICANT|CRITICAL|null","report_path":"…|null","next_workflow":"update-skill|null","audit_ref":"…|null","exit_code":0,"halt_reason":null}

status is "success" on the terminal happy path, "error" on any HALT. drift_score is null when the workflow halted before severity classification ran. next_workflow is "update-skill" when CRITICAL or HIGH findings exist, otherwise null. halt_reason is one of: null (success), "input-missing", "skill-not-found", "forge-tier-missing", "source-dir-missing", "write-failed", "user-cancelled". exit_code matches the table above.

On Activation

1. Load config from {project-root}/_bmad/skf/config.yaml and resolve:

• project_name, output_folder, user_name, communication_language, document_output_language
• skills_output_folder, forge_data_folder, sidecar_path
• Generate and store timestamp as YYYYMMDD-HHmmss format. This value is fixed for the entire workflow run.

1. Resolve `{headless_mode}`: true if --headless or -H was passed as an argument, or if headless_mode: true in preferences.yaml. Default: false.

1. Resolve workflow customization. Run:

   python3 {project-root}/_bmad/scripts/resolve_customization.py \
       --skill {skill-root} --key workflow

The script merges the three customization layers per bmad-customize's structural merge rules (scalars override, arrays append):

• {skill-root}/customize.toml — bundled defaults
• _bmad/custom/<skill-name>.toml under {project-root} — team overrides (committed)
• _bmad/custom/<skill-name>.user.toml under {project-root} — personal overrides (gitignored)

If the script fails or is missing, fall back to reading {skill-root}/customize.toml directly — the bundled defaults are an empty string for each path scalar.

Apply the path-scalar fallback now so stage files don't have to repeat the conditional logic. For each of the scalars, if the merged value is empty or absent, use the bundled default:

• {driftReportTemplatePath} ← workflow.drift_report_template_path if non-empty, else assets/drift-report-template.md
• {severityRulesPath} ← workflow.severity_rules_path if non-empty, else references/severity-rules.md
• {onCompleteCommand} ← workflow.on_complete if non-empty, else empty (no-op — report.md skips the hook invocation entirely)

Stash all three as workflow-context variables. Stage files reference {driftReportTemplatePath} / {severityRulesPath} / {onCompleteCommand} directly — no conditional at the usage site. Empty-string overrides cleanly fall through to the bundled default; non-empty values let orgs swap in house-style copies (custom drift-report layout, stricter severity thresholds) or wire in post-audit hooks (Slack notifier, ticket-tracker integration) without forking the skill.

1. Load, read the full file, and then execute references/init.md to begin the workflow.