# The Drift-Audit Checklist (Chapter 9)

**Use when:** the report factory is scheduled and running. The ritual is monthly, and it takes five minutes.

Drift is the factory's default state: inputs move, readers change, the delta logic goes stale, and the report keeps producing confidently. This checklist catches it while it is cheap.

## The five-minute monthly ritual

- [ ] The last-run timestamp is one you actually look at, not one you scroll past.
- [ ] The input folder is still the only input, and it still holds what the chain says it holds.
- [ ] The delta logic still describes what the report actually computes. If a human added a step by hand twice, the chain is lying and the step belongs in it.
- [ ] The report still has readers. Apply the readership test: if nobody reads it, delete it and tell whoever asked why.
- [ ] Three consecutive cycles ran with zero hand-rebuilds.
- [ ] Every output was reviewed before it shipped, including the ones that looked fine. Five minutes of attention is the price of the report.
- [ ] A colleague could review the latest draft and reach the same call as you.
- [ ] The failure alert still points somewhere you actually see it.

## If something fails

Fix the chain before the next run, then re-run the whole audit next month. One honest note: the skip never announces itself. It shows up later, as a wrong number found by someone else or a meeting where you cannot explain your own artifact. The audit exists so the drift shows up here, in five minutes, instead of there, in public.

## The deeper check, quarterly

- [ ] The outcome description still matches what the report is for. If the reader's decision changed, the report changed with it, or it should be deleted.
- [ ] The style file is current. A stale voice makes the factory sound like the person you were last quarter.

The factory drafts. You ship. The audit is how you notice when that sentence stops being true.