Drift Sentinel

VerifiedSafe

Audits documentation for drift against the code. Use when preparing a release, onboarding someone new, or after large refactors.

Sby Skills Guide Bot
DocumentationIntermediate
107/26/2026
Claude Code
#documentation-audit#code-drift#stale-docs#release-prep#tech-debt

Recommended for

Our review

Audits documentation for drift against the code, identifying stale references, dead links, and incorrect instructions.

Strengths

  • Automated consistency checks between code and documentation.
  • Severity levels (HIGH, MEDIUM, LOW) to prioritize fixes.
  • Support for targeted checks (dead links, file references) and JSON output.
  • Dry-run mode to preview auto-fixes before applying.

Limitations

  • Requires initial setup via drift init.
  • Limited to artifacts detectable by existing verifiers.
  • May produce false positives if file paths change intentionally.
When to use it

Use this skill before a release, after a major refactor, or when the user mentions outdated docs or broken links.

When not to use it

Avoid using it for external documentation not tied to the codebase, or for projects without structured documentation to audit.

Security analysis

Safe
Quality score90/100

The skill only runs the 'drift' audit tool with Bash, and drift is a documentation checker with no destructive or exfiltration capabilities. No unsafe operations are performed.

No concerns found

Examples

Full documentation audit
Run a full drift audit on the current codebase.
Release-ready audit with severity limit
Check documentation drift before release, only show medium and high severity issues.
Audit recent changes
Audit documentation for drift since the last merge commit.

name: drift-sentinel description: Audits documentation for drift against the code. Use when preparing a release, onboarding someone new, or when the user mentions out-of-date docs. Also use after large refactors to catch stale doc references. allowed-tools:

  • Bash(drift *)

When to use this skill

  • User says "update the docs" or "check the README" → run drift audit
  • Before a release → run drift audit --max-severity=medium
  • After a big refactor → run drift audit --since <last-merge>
  • User mentions a stale example or broken link → run drift audit
  • Need only one kind of check (e.g. dead links) → drift audit --kind dead-external-link,dead-file-ref
  • Want machine-readable output for another tool → drift audit --json (stdout is pure JSON)
  • Need a clean run without dropping DRIFT_REPORT.md in the repo → add --no-report
  • Discover what verifiers exist → drift verifiers list
  • Scaffold a starter config → drift init

How to interpret results

  • HIGH — must fix; users will follow a broken instruction
  • MEDIUM — should fix before release
  • LOW — nice to have; often acceptable to defer

After running, read DRIFT_REPORT.md (written by default in terminal mode; suppress with --no-report; relocate with --report-path). For auto-fixable items, suggest running drift fix --dry-run first, then drift fix.

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