Checker config (tier-dial:read-path): this checker's floor/ceiling come from the tier dial at .claude/hooks/lib/tier-dial.mjs via resolveCheckerThreshold('spec'). Advisory only this slice (v1 piece 2); blocking is piece 5.

spec-lint — preflight a spec draft

Invocable by both user (/spec-lint <slug>) and Claude (when iterating on a spec and wanting to check status before writing).

What it checks

Five checks always run, same logic as the hooks, but advisory (no writes are blocked). One more appears only when its trigger fires.

Checks are identified by row name, in the order the report prints them. Ordinals are deliberately absent: they have already drifted once — lint.mjs labels the codesign check "#4" in its own comment while the report prints it last — and a number that means one thing in the source and another in the table is worse than no number.

Check	Row name	Hook it mirrors
Every plantuml fence parses under plantuml -checkonly	plantuml_syntax	plantuml_syntax_guard
Required diagram kinds present (config: project.json → artifacts.required_diagrams.spec)	diagram_presence	spec_diagram_presence_guard
Every AC-NNN row in the Acceptance criteria table references a §Behavior #N section that exists	ac_traceability	(no hook — unique to the lint)
Each ## Design calls row carries a populated Reference target and Quality criteria	design_calls	spec_design_calls_guard
Each ## System delta row resolves — an add anchors inside the governed surface, a change/remove names an existing element	system_delta	(no hook — the guard checks only that the section is present)

Conditional check	Row name	Fires when
A ## Decisions section is present	codesign_decisions	workflow.json → codesign_mode is true

system_delta reports SKIP when project.json → memory.architecture_map.enabled is not true. The corpus at docs/system/ is opt-in, so a project that has not adopted it declares no delta and the check has nothing to resolve.

Invocation

/spec-lint <slug> — where <slug> corresponds to docs/specs/<slug>.md.

Steps

1. Validate the slug: docs/specs/<slug>.md must exist.
2. Run:

   node .claude/skills/spec-lint/lint.mjs <slug>
   

3. Print the script's output verbatim to the user. It is a table with one row per check and a final summary line.

Output format

check                              status
---------------------------------- ------
plantuml_syntax                    PASS
diagram_presence                   FAIL  (missing: c4_component, dependency_graph)
ac_traceability                    FAIL  (AC-002 → §Behavior #2 not found)
design_calls                       PASS
system_delta                       FAIL  (add row foo-guard: anchor docs/notes/x.md falls outside the governed surface)
---------------------------------- ------
overall                            FAIL

Exit 0 on overall PASS, 1 on overall FAIL. Intended for use in CI or a pre-commit loop as well as interactively.

Prerequisites

• plantuml CLI on PATH for check #1 (if absent, #1 is reported as SKIP (no plantuml); the rest still run).

Notes

• Unlike the hooks, spec-lint runs against the on-disk file, not proposed content. Save or use the hooks to validate an unsaved draft.
• spec-lint does not render. Use /spec-render <slug> for that.