Project Health Audit

Comprehensive project-wide health assessment using 5 parallel specialist subagents.

Usage

/phx:audit              # Full audit (default)
/phx:audit --quick      # 2-3 minute pulse check
/phx:audit --focus=security   # Deep dive single area
/phx:audit --focus=performance
/phx:audit --since abc123   # Incremental audit since commit
/phx:audit --since HEAD~10  # Audit last 10 commits

When to Use

• Quarterly health checks
• Before major releases
• After large refactors
• New team member onboarding (understand codebase health)

Iron Laws

1. Wait for ALL agents before synthesizing — Partial results create misleading health scores because cross-category correlations get missed
2. Scope agent prompts to specific directories — Vague prompts like "analyze the codebase" produce generic findings that waste tokens and miss real issues
3. Never compare scores across projects — Scoring methodology depends on project size and maturity; only track trends within the same project
4. Quick mode before full mode — Run --quick first to catch compile/test failures before spending tokens on 5 parallel agents

Subagent Architecture

Spawn 5 specialists in parallel using Agent tool. Three route to plugin specialists with a declared model; the two categories without a specialist use general-purpose pinned to model: "sonnet" — unpinned, they inherit the session model (Opus by default):

Subagent	Focus	Output File	Routes to
Architecture Reviewer	Structure quality, coupling, cohesion	arch-review.md	phoenix-patterns-analyst (sonnet)
Performance Auditor	N+1, indexes, bottlenecks, scalability	perf-audit.md	general-purpose, model: "sonnet" (no perf specialist yet)
Security Auditor	OWASP scan, auth patterns, secrets	security-audit.md	security-analyzer (opus)
Test Health Auditor	Coverage, quality, flaky tests	test-audit.md	testing-reviewer (sonnet)
Dependency Auditor	Vulnerabilities, outdated, unused	deps-audit.md	general-purpose, model: "sonnet" (hex-deps-triager is per-package only)

Workflow

Step 1: Create Task List and Spawn All 5 Auditors (Parallel)

If TaskCreate is in your tool list, create Claude Code tasks for progress visibility (Sonnet 5+ and Opus 4.8+ omit it unless CLAUDE_CODE_ENABLE_TODO_TOOLS=1; never ToolSearch for it — skip this block):

For each auditor:
  TaskCreate({subject: "{Area} audit", activeForm: "Auditing {area}..."})
  TaskUpdate({taskId, status: "in_progress"})

Then spawn all 5 agents with Agent tool (parallel). Route to declared-model specialists where they exist, keep general-purpose only where no specialist covers the audit category:

Agent(subagent_type: "phx:phoenix-patterns-analyst", prompt: "Architecture audit: analyze module structure, context boundaries, coupling, cohesion. Write findings to .claude/audit/reports/arch-review.md", run_in_background: true)
Agent(subagent_type: "general-purpose", model: "sonnet", prompt: "Performance audit: N+1 queries, missing indexes, bottlenecks, scalability. Write findings to .claude/audit/reports/perf-audit.md", run_in_background: true)
Agent(subagent_type: "phx:security-analyzer",        prompt: "Security audit: OWASP scan, auth patterns, secret leakage. Write findings to .claude/audit/reports/security-audit.md", run_in_background: true)
Agent(subagent_type: "phx:testing-reviewer",         prompt: "Test health audit: coverage, quality, flakes. Write findings to .claude/audit/reports/test-audit.md", run_in_background: true)
Agent(subagent_type: "general-purpose", model: "sonnet", prompt: "Dependency audit: vulnerabilities, outdated, unused. Write findings to .claude/audit/reports/deps-audit.md", run_in_background: true)

Why specialist routing matters: a general-purpose subagent without model: inherits the session model — Opus on every plan since CC 2.1.280. Plugin specialists declare their own model in frontmatter, and the two general-purpose tracks pin model: "sonnet", so no audit track runs on Opus.

Agent prompts must be FOCUSED. Scope each prompt to the relevant directories and patterns. Do NOT give vague prompts like "analyze the codebase."

Output efficiency: Tell each agent: "Report ONLY issues found. Do NOT list clean checks, passing categories, or 'What's Good'. One summary line per clean area suffices."

Step 2: Collect Results

Wait for ALL auditors to complete — one completion notification per agent spawned. If you created tasks, mark each completed as it finishes. NEVER proceed while any auditor is still running.

Read reports from .claude/audit/reports/.

Rate-limit circuit breaker: if 2+ auditors return empty results or rate-limit/API errors, STOP spawning. Synthesize from the reports that exist, mark missing categories as "not audited (rate limit)", and tell the user to re-run /phx:audit after the limit resets. Never leave the user typing "continue" against dead agents.

Step 3: Compress Findings

After all 5 auditors complete, spawn context-supervisor:

Agent(subagent_type: "phx:context-supervisor", prompt: """
Compress audit findings.
Input: .claude/audit/reports/
Output: .claude/audit/summaries/
Priority: Health scores per category, critical findings
only, cross-category correlations, deduplicate findings
found by 2+ agents.
""")

Read .claude/audit/summaries/consolidated.md for synthesis.

Step 4: Calculate Health Score

Each category scores 0-100. See ${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/references/scoring-methodology.md.

Step 5: Generate Report

Write to .claude/audit/summaries/project-health-{date}.md.

Output Format

Report includes: Executive summary with health score (A-F, numeric/100), per-category score table (Architecture, Performance, Security, Tests, Dependencies), critical issues, top recommendations, and action plan (Immediate/Short-term/Long-term).

Quick Mode (--quick)

Only run essential checks (~2-3 minutes):

Run mix compile --warnings-as-errors, then mix hex.audit && mix deps.audit, then mix xref graph --format stats, then mix test --trace 2>&1 | tail -20.

Skip: Full security scan, N+1 analysis, test quality metrics, architecture deep dive.

Focus Mode (--focus=area)

Deep dive single area with full specialist resources:

Focus	Subagent	Extra Checks
security	security-analyzer	Full OWASP, sobelow, manual patterns
performance	general-purpose	Profile-level analysis, query explain (no plugin specialist yet)
architecture	phoenix-patterns-analyst	Full xref, coupling matrix, cohesion
tests	testing-reviewer	Coverage by context, quality metrics
deps	general-purpose	License audit, maintenance status (per-package hex-deps-triager only)

Incremental Mode (--since <commit>)

Analyze only changes since a specific commit. Useful for pre-merge checks:

Run git diff --name-only <commit>...HEAD to identify changed files, then run targeted audits on changed files only (skips full project scan).

Combines with other flags: /phx:audit --since HEAD~5 --focus=security

Relationship to Other Commands

Command	Scope	Frequency
/phx:review	Changed files (diff)	Every PR
/phx:audit	Entire project	Quarterly
/phx:boundaries	Context structure	On-demand
/phx:verify	Compile/test pass	Anytime

References

• ${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/references/scoring-methodology.md - How scores are calculated
• ${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/references/architecture-checks.md - Detailed architecture criteria