Router health

Router Health Skill

You are reporting on the health of the deterministic-dispatch router. This is a read-only skill — never mutate state, logs, or the catalog.

What this skill does

1. Runs python -m claude_wayfinder health --report.
2. Prints the report verbatim.
3. Adds an Analysis section with drill-down on any FAIL'ing or near-threshold metric.
4. Adds an extended Notable Findings section with qualitative observations from dispatch-log.jsonl (top agents, top skills, catalog freshness) that complement the script's built-in Notable Findings.

If invoked with --brief, skip step 2 and produce only Analysis + extended Notable Findings. Useful for mid-session quick checks where the user does not need the full report.

Path resolution

The script (claude_wayfinder._health.main) resolves each path argument via env var override or ~/.claude/... home-dir default (Issue #262). Explicit flags always win; passing no flag is equivalent to the default shown below.

Argument	Env var override	Default (when env var absent)
--drift-log	$ROUTER_DRIFT_PATH	~/.claude/state/router-drift.jsonl
--dispatch-log	$DISPATCH_LOG	~/.claude/state/dispatch-log.jsonl
--catalog-path	$DISPATCH_CATALOG_PATH	(omit; catalog section will be empty)
--skills-dir	$ROUTER_SKILLS_DIR	~/.claude/skills
--agents-dir	$ROUTER_AGENTS_DIR	~/.claude/agents
--plugin-overrides-dir	$ROUTER_PLUGIN_OVERRIDES_DIR	~/.claude/triggers

Absent log files are treated as empty (telemetry sections render with zero events). Missing skills/agents/overrides directories produce a FAIL on the corresponding CI invariants, which is the correct signal.

Note: --drift-log uses $ROUTER_DRIFT_PATH (matching scripts/analyze-drift-causes.py), not $ROUTER_DRIFT_LOG. Both tools resolve the drift log from the same env var so overriding one overrides both.

Step 1: Run the report

Use the plugin-installed claude-wayfinder package via python -m. This assumes the plugin venv's python is on $PATH (the standard setup after /setup-wayfinder). If the user's shell does not have the venv activated, substitute the absolute interpreter path: ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_DATA}/venv/bin/python (POSIX) or ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_DATA}/venv/Scripts/python.exe (Windows).

Bare invocation uses the home-dir defaults automatically:

python -m claude_wayfinder health --report

Override individual paths via env vars when needed:

ROUTER_DRIFT_PATH=/custom/drift.jsonl python -m claude_wayfinder health --report

Or pass explicit flags (these override both env vars and defaults):

python -m claude_wayfinder health --report \
  --drift-log    /path/to/router-drift.jsonl \
  --dispatch-log /path/to/dispatch-log.jsonl \
  --skills-dir   /path/to/skills \
  --agents-dir   /path/to/agents \
  --plugin-overrides-dir /path/to/triggers

--catalog-path is omitted intentionally — the script falls back to $DISPATCH_CATALOG_PATH when no flag is passed.

If --brief was passed by the user, capture the output but do not print it verbatim — only use it as input to Step 2.

Step 2: Print the report verbatim

Unless --brief was passed, emit the captured markdown unchanged. Begin your response with the report.

Step 3: Analyze the report

The script already emits an ACTION REQUIRED block for FAIL'ing CI invariants and a THRESHOLD BREACH block for FAIL'ing runtime telemetry. The Analysis section adds warning-zone drill-down for metrics that pass today but are within 80% of the FAIL threshold, plus drift-event correlation.

Parse each row of the CI Invariants and Runtime Telemetry tables for the Status column. For every row whose status is FAIL OR is within 80% of the FAIL threshold, produce a sub-bullet under the Analysis section explaining the most likely driver.

How to compute "warning zone"

Metric	Healthy direction	Warning zone (>80% toward FAIL)
Dispatch invocation rate	≥ 80%	between 80% and 84%
Bypass rate	≤ 10%	between 8% and 10%
Advisory override rate	≤ 30%	between 24% and 30%
Catalog availability	= 100%	any sub-100% reading is already a FAIL
Catalog stability	identical bytes	byte-difference is FAIL outright
Schema validation	exit 0, 0 fatal	any fatal entry is FAIL outright
Trigger firing accuracy	10/10 smoke tests	<10/10 is FAIL outright

Drift event shape

Drift events come in two shapes — your queries must handle both:

• Categorical: {"type": "router_drift", "category": "bypass" | "advisory_override" | ...}
• Type-tagged: {"type": "self_handle_unaided_invocation", "count": N} (no category field)

Use e.get("category") or e.get("type") as the canonical event-kind discriminator in all log queries. Treating category as required will crash on type-tagged events.

Drill-down playbook per FAIL'ing metric

For Bypass rate FAIL or warning, use the drill subcommand:

python -m claude_wayfinder health drill --metric bypass --window 30d

The --drift-log flag is optional; the CLI reads from $ROUTER_DRIFT_PATH or ~/.claude/state/router-drift.jsonl by default.

Report the daily distribution and top-bypassing sessions from the output. If 5+ events come from the same session, that session is the likely outlier — flag it. Drift events do NOT carry subagent_type; to identify which agent was bypassed, correlate by session_id with dispatch-log.jsonl.

For Advisory override rate FAIL or warning, use the drill subcommand:

python -m claude_wayfinder health drill --metric advisory-override --window 30d

Report the top-3 overriding sessions from the output. Correlate with dispatch-log.jsonl to see which agent the router chose instead of the matcher's advice.

For Dispatch invocation rate FAIL or warning, this is the rate at which the router invoked the dispatch skill before delegating. Low rate means the router is routing on LLM judgment instead of deterministic matching. Sample 5 recent agent_dispatch events from dispatch-log.jsonl and check whether each was preceded by a dispatch_invocation for the same session within ~30 seconds.

For Catalog availability FAIL, any catalog_degraded_session event is immediate action. Print the most recent ones in full (timestamp, session_id, full event payload) and recommend re-running the catalog generator (/refresh-catalog or claude-wayfinder catalog build) and inspecting the build log.

For Catalog stability FAIL, the script ran the catalog builder twice and got byte-different output — the generator is non-deterministic. Re-run by hand and diff. Common causes: dict iteration order, timestamp embedding, unsorted set serialization.

Recent drift events list

After the per-metric drill-down, surface the 5 most recent drift events:

python -m claude_wayfinder health drill --metric recent-drift --limit 5

If there are zero recent events, say so explicitly — that is a positive signal worth surfacing.

Step 4: Extended Notable Findings

The script's built-in ## Notable Findings section reports plugin entry counts. Extend it with:

Top 3 dispatched agents (last 30 days)

python -m claude_wayfinder health top --kind agents --window 30d --limit 3

The --dispatch-log flag is optional; the CLI reads from $DISPATCH_LOG or ~/.claude/state/dispatch-log.jsonl by default.

Flag if any one agent dominates above 60% — that may indicate the router is over-delegating to a single specialist, or that the user's workload is genuinely concentrated.

Top 3 most-invoked skills (last 30 days)

python -m claude_wayfinder health top --kind skills --window 30d --limit 3

The top skill being dispatch itself is expected; if any other skill dominates dispatch's count, that is notable.

self_handle_unaided rate (catalog coverage signal)

The dispatch matcher returns self_handle_unaided when the input has sufficient density (≥ 2 feature dimensions) but no specialist scored. A rising rate suggests catalog coverage gaps.

For now, since dispatch-log.jsonl does not directly tag self_handle_unaided, report this as best-effort by counting agent_dispatch events with agent == "general-purpose" and an empty skills_in_prompt array — those are the closest live proxy. Caveat the metric explicitly when reporting it.

Catalog entry counts

python -m claude_wayfinder health catalog-status

This reports plugin skill / agent entry counts and routable-agent count. Flag any unexpected zeros (e.g. zero routable agents when plugin-override entries are expected in the catalog).

Catalog freshness

Check the modification timestamp on the catalog file (resolved via $DISPATCH_CATALOG_PATH). If more than 14 days stale, flag it — the catalog should be regenerated whenever triggers.yml files change.

python -c "
import os, datetime as dt
path = os.environ.get('DISPATCH_CATALOG_PATH') or os.path.expanduser('~/.claude/dispatch-catalog.json')
if os.path.exists(path):
    mtime = dt.datetime.fromtimestamp(os.path.getmtime(path), dt.timezone.utc)
    age = (dt.datetime.now(dt.timezone.utc) - mtime).days
    print(f'  {os.path.basename(path)}: {age}d old (mtime {mtime.isoformat()})')
else:
    print(f'  catalog absent at {path}')
"

Output shape

The final response should look like this (markdown):

<`claude-wayfinder health --report` output verbatim, including the H1 "# Router Health Report">

## Analysis

<bullet list of FAIL'ing or warning-zone metrics with drill-downs>

### Recent drift events

<5-row list, or "none in the last week">

## Extended Notable Findings

### Top dispatched agents (last 30 days)

<table or bullets>

### Top invoked skills (last 30 days)

<table or bullets>

### `self_handle_unaided` rate (catalog coverage)

<count + caveat>

### Catalog entry counts

<skills/agents/routable counts>

### Catalog freshness

<one age line>

If --brief: omit the verbatim report (Step 2) — start the response with ## Analysis.

Tone and discipline

• Be specific and quantitative. Cite exact counts, percentages, session-id prefixes, dates.
• Do not invent metrics that the script does not produce. Stick to the observed data.
• Do not recommend changes to thresholds — those are codified in src/claude_wayfinder/_health.py and changing them is a separate decision.
• Where a finding suggests action (regenerate catalog, investigate a bypass-heavy session), name the next step concretely with the command to run.
• If a log file is missing or empty, say so — never silently fall through with zero counts that look like "everything is healthy."

Failure modes

• Script exits non-zero: surface stderr verbatim, recommend the user run the command directly to see the failure. Do not produce Analysis or Notable Findings sections — the source data is unreliable.
• Log files missing: if dispatch-log.jsonl or router-drift.jsonl do not exist, the corresponding hooks are not firing. Flag this as a dispatch-pipeline drift event in its own right and recommend checking the PreToolUse / Stop hooks in the consumer's hook registry.
• Catalog file missing: report this as a catalog-availability outage and recommend running /refresh-catalog or claude-wayfinder catalog build.
• python not on PATH: the user has not run /setup-wayfinder yet, or the plugin venv is not activated. Recommend /setup-wayfinder and re-running this skill in a fresh session.