Gap Analysis

Project Context

• CLAUDE.md: !find . -maxdepth 1 -name "CLAUDE.md" -type f
• project-discovery.md: !find . -maxdepth 3 -name "project-discovery.md" -type f
• personal config directory: !bash "${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/scripts/han-config-dir.sh" 2>/dev/null || echo "$HOME/.claude"
• project .han/config.md: !cat .han/config.md 2>/dev/null || echo ""

As your first action, use the Read tool on .han/config.md inside the personal config directory path above. A read that returns no file is no personal configuration: continue silently. When that file or the project .han/config.md probe supplies content, apply it per config-rule.md, which governs precedence between the two files, relative-path resolution, and what to do with a file that reads but cannot be used.

Operating Principles

• The han-core:gap-analyzer agent owns the primary analysis. This skill does not classify gaps itself. It calls han-core:gap-analyzer once, reads the analyzer's full output file, and synthesizes a stakeholder-readable report from it.
• Plain language is the default surface. Sections 1 and 2 of the report never contain file paths, line numbers, function or class names, library mechanics, or language primitives. Technical fidelity is quarantined to Section 3 and only appears when the user has explicitly requested technical details.
• The swarm runs by default. A minimum viable swarm ships at every size: han-core:adversarial-validator and han-core:junior-developer always, plus han-core:evidence-based-investigator when the current state is concrete enough to verify against. The user may opt out with no swarm to fall back to a lightweight gap-analyzer-only pass.
• Evidence rule applies to every gap. Apply the evidence rule from ../../references/evidence-rule.md when characterizing the evidence that establishes each gap. Name the trust class of every citation pair (codebase, web, provided); apply the corroboration gate to web-source claims that establish a gap; and label gaps where the desired-state evidence is absent ("the spec is silent on X") as a distinct state, not as a weak gap. The han-core:evidence-based-investigator dispatched in the swarm carries codebase findings; the gap analyzer carries the spec-side citations.
• Artifact-level analysis caveats are surfaced once, not per gap. Some validator observations apply uniformly to the whole comparison rather than to any one gap — most commonly a provenance concern about the desired-state artifact as a whole (for example, "the desired state is a provided, uncommitted, same-session source," which the evidence rule's provided trust class genuinely warrants flagging). Surface such an observation a single time as an artifact-level analysis caveat. Do not repeat it as a per-gap verdict on every gap that rests on that artifact, and do not let it raise or lower any gap's confidence — it bears on the whole report equally, so per-gap weighting would double-count one fact. Provenance concerns specific to a single gap's evidence still belong to that gap's verdict.
• han-core:junior-developer runs the actor-perspective sweep. Gap analysis lives at the feature and behavioral level from a user's or actor's perspective — human end users (and sub-roles like customer, admin, auditor, support agent), API callers, AI agents, integration partners, batch processes, internal services. The han-core:junior-developer's job in the swarm is to check that each gap holds for every actor type the desired state addresses or implies, and to surface gaps the analyzer missed because it only considered one actor type.
• han-core:plan-synthesizer coordinates Section 4 synthesis at medium and large only. When the swarm reaches four or more agents, the synthesizer consolidates the swarm's confirmations, contradictions, augmentations, and per-gap confidence values for the skill to render. At small swarm size (two or three agents), the skill consolidates deterministically without the synthesizer.
• Optional sections must not be load-bearing. A report with only Sections 1 and 2 must stand on its own. Sections 3 and 4 are additive — never required for Sections 1 and 2 to make sense.
• Purpose-conditioned prioritization is a labeled skill judgment, never the analyzer's. The han-core:gap-analyzer produces a neutral, unprioritized gap list and must stay that way. When the user states why they are running the comparison (e.g., "before a redesign pass," "to scope the next sprint"), the skill may add one explicitly-labeled "Where to start" pointer view that names the few gaps most blocking that stated purpose. This is the skill's own synthesis judgment — the same kind it already makes when it clusters gaps into themes and derives confidence — layered on top of the neutral list, never replacing it, and omitted entirely when no purpose was given.
• Gap IDs are stable for the life of the report. Map GAP-NNN from the han-core:gap-analyzer output to G-NNN in the report, preserving order. Cross-references in Sections 3 and 4 use the same G-NNN IDs.
• The report template lives at gap-analysis-report-template.md. It was designed by the han-core:information-architect agent. The skill renders the template by filling placeholders and removing the optional sections that were not requested or generated.
• The report is written to the shared readability standard. The skill sources the standard by invoking han-communication:readability-guidance and applies it as it writes the report, holding the default audience frame: a capable reader who did not do this work and lacks the author's context. The stable gap IDs (G-NNN) are citation identifiers and survive any rewrite or self-check unchanged.

Run a Gap Analysis

Step 1: Identify Inputs and Project Context

Read the user's argument and conversation context to identify two artifacts:

• The current state — what exists today (e.g., the implementation, the shipped feature, the legacy design).
• The desired state — what is expected (e.g., the spec, the PRD, the new design).

Inputs may be file paths, directory paths, URLs, or inline text. If the user named only one artifact and a comparison target is implied (e.g., "compare the auth module to the auth spec"), search the project for the implied second artifact using Glob and Grep against docs/, specs/, requirements/, or directories surfaced via CLAUDE.md / project-discovery.md. If the implied artifact cannot be located, ask the user for the path before proceeding.

State the resolved comparison direction to the user in one line: "Comparing {current} against {desired}." If the user wants the direction reversed, accept the override.

Capture the purpose, if one was stated. Note why the user is running this comparison when they said so (e.g., "before a redesign pass," "to scope the next sprint," "to decide whether to ship"). If no purpose is evident, you may offer to capture one in the same one-line confirmation — for example, "If you tell me what this comparison is for, I'll flag which gaps block that goal." Do not block on it: a purpose is optional and only drives the optional "Where to start" view in Step 6. Record the purpose verbatim if given.

Resolve project config: read CLAUDE.md's ## Project Discovery section if present; fall back to project-discovery.md; fall back to the working directory's docs/ tree. The output report will be written to the project's documentation root if one exists (docs/, documentation/, or a folder surfaced by project config), otherwise to the current working directory. Default report filename: gap-analysis-report.md. If a same-named file already exists, append a short timestamp suffix to avoid overwriting.

Step 2: Run the han-core:gap-analyzer Agent

Launch han-core:gap-analyzer with a single Agent tool call. Provide:

• The current state and the desired state (paths, URLs, or inline text exactly as resolved in Step 1), with explicit labeling of which is which.
• Any scope the user provided (specific subsystems, features, sections).
• A directive to write its full analysis to a file alongside the future report (e.g., {report-dir}/gap-analysis-source.md) so the skill can read the structured findings and translate them.
• A directive to use unidirectional comparison (current → desired) unless the user explicitly asked for bidirectional analysis.
• A directive to report the actors and modes it observed in the desired state — named roles and sub-roles, interactive vs. batch/automated modes, and API / agent / integration surfaces — as a neutral observation in its output. The analyzer already reads the desired state's full surface area while building the correspondence map; this only asks it to surface what it saw. It is an observation, not a prioritization or classification, so it does not touch the analyzer's neutral posture.

Read the observed-actor list from the analyzer's output once it returns; it seeds the han-core:junior-developer actor sweep in Step 5.

Wait for the agent's return. The summary it returns names the file path and gap counts by category. Read the full analysis file from disk before proceeding — the per-gap entries (GAP-001, GAP-002, ...) are in the file, not the returned summary.

Step 3: Classify Size and Build the Swarm

Default to small. Start the classification at small and only escalate to medium or large when the signals below clearly require it. When a signal is borderline, stay at the smaller band. Use these signals from the han-core:gap-analyzer output:

• Small (default) — 0–3 total gaps, single domain (e.g., one feature, one module, one document section), no security / data / cross-service / architectural signals in any gap. Swarm: 2–3 agents (validator + han-core:junior-developer, plus investigator when the current state is concrete).
• Medium — 4–10 total gaps, two or three adjacent domains, may touch one cross-cutting concern (a single auth surface, a single integration boundary, a single data-contract change). Swarm: 4–6 agents (validator + han-core:junior-developer + investigator + 1–2 domain specialists + han-core:plan-synthesizer).
• Large — 11+ gaps, OR cross-cutting concerns across multiple domains (security + data + architecture, or cross-service integration), OR the user explicitly requested a full swarm. Swarm: 6–8 agents (validator + han-core:junior-developer + investigator + 2–4 domain specialists + han-core:plan-synthesizer).

Always required, at every size:

• han-core:adversarial-validator — attacks the han-core:gap-analyzer's findings with counter-evidence to surface invalid gaps and produce per-gap confidence verdicts.
• han-core:junior-developer — runs the actor-perspective sweep. For every gap, enumerates every actor the desired state addresses or implies (human end users and sub-roles, API callers, AI agents, integration partners, batch processes, internal services) and checks whether the gap holds for every actor type. Surfaces gaps the analyzer missed because it only considered one actor type.

Required when the current state is concrete (codebase, document on disk, fetchable URL — not inline-text-only comparison):

• han-core:evidence-based-investigator — verifies each gap against the actual current state with file-level or document-level evidence. Effectively always required at medium and large; the inline-text-only path is the rare exception.

Required at medium and large:

• han-core:plan-synthesizer — consolidates swarm output into Section 4 of the report during synthesis (Step 5.6). Not called per-round.

Add domain specialists up to the size cap based on what the gaps actually touch. Read the gap entries to decide. Draw from:

• han-core:adversarial-security-analyst — gaps touching auth, authorization, PII, secrets, untrusted input, supply chain.
• han-core:user-experience-designer — gaps touching user-facing flows, UI, interaction, accessibility.
• han-core:data-engineer — gaps touching schemas, migrations, data movement, analytics.
• han-core:devops-engineer — gaps touching deployment, observability, rollout, scale, SLO impact, cost.
• han-core:on-call-engineer — gaps where the current application source is missing the named code-level resilience patterns the desired state implies: timeouts, retry safety, idempotency, backpressure, kill switches, correlation-id propagation, observability of failure paths. Application source only — defer infrastructure and pipeline gaps to han-core:devops-engineer.
• han-core:system-architect — gaps crossing service or bounded-context boundaries, integration patterns, data ownership.
• han-core:software-architect — gaps inside a single codebase touching module boundaries, abstractions, SOLID concerns.
• han-core:content-auditor — gaps where the desired state is documentation and content preservation is in question.
• han-core:codebase-explorer — gaps where the current state is unfamiliar code that needs deeper discovery before the validators can act.

Extra agents named in the project config's ## Extra Agents list join this domain-specialist pool and compete under the same gap-driven selection and size caps, per ../../references/config-rule.md: add one only when a gap touches its stated specialty, count it against the size cap, and skip an entry that does not resolve to a dispatchable agent with a one-line note.

State the size, the chosen swarm composition, and the per-specialist justification to the user in a short message — for example:

Size: medium. Detected 7 gaps across the auth surface and the user-profile data contract. Swarm (5 agents):

• han-core:adversarial-validator — required at every size.
• han-core:junior-developer — required at every size; actor sweep across the auth surface (human users, API callers, internal service callers).
• han-core:evidence-based-investigator — required; verifies the auth-surface gaps against src/auth/.
• han-core:adversarial-security-analyst — three gaps touch session-token handling.
• han-core:plan-synthesizer — required at medium; consolidates swarm output into Section 4.

Size override. If $size is non-empty (the user passed small, medium, large, or dynamic as the first argument), use it: a band value is the size and skips the signal-based classification above, while dynamic forces the signal-based classification even when the project config sets a default band. If $size is empty and the project config supplies a band via default-swarm-size (per the config rule in ../../references/config-rule.md), use that band, skip the signal-based classification, and announce the config as the source. The swarm composition still scales to the chosen size. If the user named specific specialists, honor those. If the user requested a different size in conversation rather than via $size, accept the override.

Step 4: Confirm Swarm and Technical-Detail Modes

Surface both decisions to the user in one combined message:

Swarm: running by default with [team above]. Reply no swarm to skip the swarm entirely, lightweight to drop to the minimum two (validator + han-core:junior-developer), or name specialists to add or remove.

Technical details: not included by default. Reply include technical details to add Section 3 with file-level fidelity, or plain language only to omit it.

If the user already specified either mode in their original request (e.g., "run a gap analysis with technical details" or "skip the swarm"), honor that and skip this confirmation.

Default behavior when the user does not respond or says "proceed": swarm runs as recommended, plain language only. Record the chosen modes — they determine which sections appear in the final report.

Step 5: Run the Swarm (unless opted out)

If the user passed no swarm, skip to Step 6.

Launch every selected swarm agent in parallel — a single Agent-tool message with one tool call per agent so they run concurrently — except han-core:plan-synthesizer, which is held for synthesis after the other agents return (see Step 5.6). Use domain-scoped briefs:

• Pass each agent the path to the han-core:gap-analyzer's full analysis file plus the gap entries relevant to its domain inline. For han-core:adversarial-validator, han-core:evidence-based-investigator, and han-core:junior-developer, pass the entire gap list — they are generalist by design for this use case.
• Pass each agent the resolved current-state and desired-state paths so it can re-read them on demand.
• Frame the question precisely:
  • Validator (han-core:adversarial-validator) — "For each gap below, attempt to disprove it. Cite counter-evidence. Return a per-gap verdict: confirmed, contradicted, or inconclusive, with reasoning. Apply full provenance scrutiny to the inputs. When a provenance concern applies uniformly to the desired-state artifact as a whole (for example, the desired state is a provided, uncommitted, same-session source), return it once as a single artifact-level analysis_caveat — not as a per-gap verdict repeated across every gap that rests on that artifact. Keep provenance concerns specific to an individual gap's evidence inside that gap's verdict."
  • Investigator (han-core:evidence-based-investigator) — "For each gap below, verify whether the current state actually shows what the analyzer claimed. Cite file paths and line numbers in your reasoning, but return a per-gap verdict: confirmed, contradicted, or unverifiable."
  • Junior-developer (actor sweep) — "For every gap in the analyzer's output, run an actor-perspective sweep. Candidate actors the analyzer observed in the desired state: [paste the observed-actor list from Step 2; write none observed if the analyzer reported none]. Treat that list as a floor, not a ceiling — expand it with every actor type the desired state addresses or implies: human end users (and sub-roles like customer / admin / auditor / support agent), API callers, AI agents, integration partners, batch processes, internal services. For each gap, check whether it holds for every actor type or only the one the analyzer compared against. Surface as proposed_new_gap any case where the analyzer's gap is correct for one actor but a different gap exists for another actor that the analyzer missed. Apply Protocol 8 plain-language reframing to each gap from the most-affected actor's vantage point and flag any gap that would not be recognizable as a gap to that actor."
  • Augmenters (every domain specialist) — "For each gap that touches your domain, add concrete context the han-core:gap-analyzer may have missed: related risks, secondary effects, or refinements to the gap's framing. Do not introduce new gaps; if you find one, raise it as proposed_new_gap with evidence."
• Direct every agent to cite gap IDs as GAP-NNN (the analyzer's IDs) so the skill can map them back to G-NNN in the report.

Collect every agent's verbatim output. If an agent returned a proposed_new_gap with evidence, append it to the analyzer's findings as a new GAP-NNN entry before report rendering — do not silently drop it. Mark it in the report with a footnote noting it was surfaced by the swarm and by which agent (han-core:junior-developer (actor sweep), han-core:adversarial-security-analyst, etc.).