/health-check — 8-Dimension Project Assessment
What
Runs a data-driven health assessment across 8 dimensions, each graded A-F with the specific data points that produced the grade, and rolls them into a GPA. Gut feeling is not a grade: every dimension uses MCP tools or CLI commands, and every grade below A comes with specific, prioritized, effort-estimated fixes — "add test classes for OrderService, PaymentProcessor, ShippingCalculator" is actionable; "improve test coverage" is not.
This skill owns the canonical grading system for the kit. The full rubrics,
GPA scale, and report template live in references/grading-rubric.md — load
that file when running an assessment.
Tone is diagnostic, not punitive: a C grade is an improvement path, not a failure.
When
- Onboarding to an unfamiliar or new project — set the baseline
- "How healthy is this?", "grade this project", "codebase review", "report card"
- Pre-release quality gate, or monthly/quarterly maintenance review
- After a cleanup sprint (
/de-sloppify) — re-grade to show progress - Tech-debt prioritization — lowest grades get the next sprint's attention
How
Step 1: Choose Scope
| Scenario | Dimensions |
|---|---|
| Full assessment (onboarding, pre-release, monthly review) | All 8 |
| Quick health (mid-sprint checkpoint, before a demo, after a merge) | 1-4 only |
| After major refactor | 1 (Build), 3 (Architecture), 4 (Tests) |
| Post-dependency update | 1 (Build), 7 (Security) |
| After cleanup sprint | Re-grade only the cleaned dimensions |
Step 2: Run the Dimensions
Read references/grading-rubric.md for the grade thresholds, then collect data
per dimension. For deep code-quality dimensions, delegate to the
code-reviewer agent with the code-review skill.
| # | Dimension | Data source |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Build Health | dotnet build --no-restore — errors + warnings |
| 2 | Code Quality | MCP detect_antipatterns — read summary, grade high-confidence only |
| 3 | Architecture | MCP get_project_graph + detect_circular_dependencies (projects AND types) |
| 4 | Test Coverage | MCP get_test_coverage_map — check applicable first (structural, not line coverage) |
| 5 | Dead Code | MCP find_dead_code(scope: "solution") — grade high-confidence; ignore conventionFiltered |
| 6 | API Surface | MCP get_public_api + find_references — overexposure, return-type consistency |
| 7 | Security Posture | dotnet list package --vulnerable --include-transitive + secrets/auth spot check (deep dive: /security-scan) |
| 8 | Documentation | XML doc coverage on public APIs + README currency |
Step 2.5: Triage Gate (before any grade is assigned)
Detector output is evidence, not a grade. Pass every finding through this gate first — it is what stops a noisy count becoming a wrong letter.
- Read
summary, not the violation list.summary.byIdis complete even when the list is truncated. Never sample a truncated list and extrapolate. - Drop
suppressed. Record the count andsummary.suppressionConfigin the report so suppression stays visible. - Set aside
medium. These are review items, not grade inputs. Summarise them by category; do not fix or count them. - Grade
highonly. These are wrong regardless of context. - Check invariants. If a signal contradicts something the target repo's CLAUDE.md documents as deliberate, the invariant wins — verify before grading.
- Read before asserting. Never describe a finding you have not opened. If you cannot open all of them, report the ones you did and say so.
Fill in the triage table from references/grading-rubric.md as you go. If the
table cannot be filled, the dimension is not ready to grade.
Step 3: Grade and Aggregate
Apply the rubric thresholds exactly — never grade on a curve ("pretty good for a project this size" is how standards erode; 15 warnings is a C regardless of project size). Convert to GPA (A=4.0 … F=0.0), averaging only the dimensions actually graded — a dimension marked "Not assessed" is excluded from the GPA, never scored as an F.
Step 4: Report
Produce the report card from the template in references/grading-rubric.md:
grades table with key findings, overall GPA, and priority recommendations —
each with named types/files, priority order, and effort estimates. If a
previous report exists, append the trend comparison table.
Example
User: /health-check Claude: Running full 8-dimension assessment... | Dimension | Grade | Key Finding | |-----------|-------|-------------| | Build Health | A | 0 errors, 2 warnings | | Code Quality | B | 3 high-confidence findings in 4.2K lines; 31 medium untriaged | | Architecture | A | Clean direction, 0 cycles | | Test Coverage | Not assessed | Integration-driven suite — structural metric invalid | | Dead Code | B | 5 unused methods (79 convention-discovered, not counted) | | API Surface | B | 2 overexposed service types | | Security | A | 0 vulnerable packages | | Documentation | D | 12/30 public APIs documented | Overall GPA: 3.1 (B) — averaged over 7 graded dimensions. Triage: 44 AP005 raw → all log-and-rethrow wrappers (medium); 2 AP004 real. Priority: (1) `SystemSeeder` → `TimeProvider`, ~15 min; (2) XML docs on the 8 endpoint classes, ~1 day; (3) review the 44 catch blocks or suppress by path.
Related
references/grading-rubric.md— canonical rubrics, GPA scale, report template/de-sloppify— cleanup pipeline for the issues a health check surfaces/security-scan— deep 6-layer scan behind Dimension 7/code-review— per-change review (this skill grades the whole project)/verify— pass/fail pipeline for a change set, not a graded assessment
