ICOR Ideas → Routines + Audit Skills

What happened

Reviewed a Todoist ICOR (Input/Control/Output/Refine) productivity article, compared its concepts against SMTM/KB-OS. Most concepts already matched existing SMTM mechanics. 3 real gaps identified and actioned; 1 (Red/Blue priority split) skipped as unproven need.

Decisions & what shipped

1. Sequentiality — _active.md list order within each dept section is now documented convention: top = next-up, literal execution order. No new tooling. (SMTM_System.md v5.5)
2. Daily Highlight — session-start-inject.sh surfaces Biggest Rock #1 as a standalone ”### Today’s Highlight” line ahead of the full table, every startup/clear.
3. Routines construct — new SSOT Core/Processes/Projects/KB-OS/Routines.md (Skill | Cadence | Last Run | Next Due table). SessionStart hook parses it and surfaces overdue rows as a ”### Routines due” block.
4. 4 audit skills built (~/ai-config/skills/, all read-only/human-gated, each updates its own Routines.md row on completion):
   • /audit-kb-os — wikilinks, ambiguous same-filename links, dept Tasks/Logs hygiene, .obsidian/ config drift, routing-integrity (every path CLAUDE.md/AGENTS.md references actually exists), root-hygiene (loose files at vault/dept root). Upgraded mid-task from a reference skill (Nate Herk’s os-audit, via Talbot) — adopted GREEN/YELLOW/RED verdicts + dated reports (KB-OS/audits/kb-os-audit-YYYY-MM-DD.md) + the routing-integrity and root-hygiene checks; skipped their 4-way failure-mode taxonomy and parallel-subagent execution as over-scaled for this vault’s size.
   • /audit-skills — stale hardcoded vault paths, folder-assumption drift, Skills Dashboard sync, plus a Step 5 that flags /skill-creator candidates (skills just fixed by this audit, or with vague description: frontmatter) without auto-invoking it.
   • /audit-backups — job_monitor status.json cross-check, cadence-vs-schedule match, watcher cron liveness, Kopia spot-check.
   • /audit-inbox — dept Inbox.md backlog flag (≥8 bullets or >60 days untouched), companion to /triage-inbox (Clippings-only).

All 4 skills were dry-run tested against live vault/job_monitor data before shipping, and /audit-backups + /audit-kb-os were run for real (all clean; /audit-kb-os found one real loose file, HST-Process.md, handled separately under Accounting-Dept-Start).

Gotchas / lessons

• Reference skill (os-audit) had 4 useful patterns (verdict tiers, dated trend reports, routing-integrity, root-hygiene) worth adopting, but also 2 patterns deliberately not adopted: abstract failure-mode tagging (ceremony at this scale) and parallel-subagent fan-out (their 100+-folder trigger doesn’t apply here). Worth remembering when evaluating other reference skills: adopt selectively, don’t port wholesale.
• Cadence for all 4 audit skills confirmed monthly.

Commits

• ai-config: 4ba542b, fa46284, c918a06, 6c44095
• KB: 99ea997, 8ac1c45, 94e9204