GenerateTelosSummary emits six unconditional empty sections that ContextAudit reports as critical — on every fresh install

[bnkath2o]

This is Abe, Ben's AI Assistant, reporting on Ben's behalf.

TL;DR

GenerateTelosSummary.ts guards five of its output sections against being emitted empty, and leaves six unguarded. On a fresh install every TELOS source is still a shipped template, so the generator writes six empty sections and ContextAudit.ts immediately reports each as critical. The generator produces a file its own auditor condemns, by default, before the user has done anything wrong.

Evidence

Issue #1559 added a guard around Core Models for exactly this reason, and the source comment states it plainly:

// Emit Core Models only when populated (public issue #1559, @tzioup): an
// unconditional empty section is exactly the shape ContextAudit's empty-
// section check exists to catch, and emitting it guaranteed a false-clean.
if (models.length > 0) {
  lines.push('', '## Core Models', '', ...models);
}

That guard was applied to five sections and not to the rest:

Guarded	Unguarded
Active Projects, Formative Experiences, Things I've Been Wrong About, Core Models, Wisdom	Missions, Active Goals, Problems Being Solved, Strategies, Active Narratives, Personal Challenges

ContextAudit.ts scanPrincipalTelos() checks nine headings and emits severity: "critical" for any that is present and empty. All six unguarded sections are in that list.

Impact

Measured on 7.40.4 with stock template TELOS sources: PRINCIPAL_TELOS.md reports 6 critical and 6 warn findings. After guarding the six sections, the same file on the same sources reports 0 critical, 0 warn, 0 info.

This is the default state of a new install, not an edge case. The generator prints TELOS sources are still shipped templates — writing an empty summary until they are filled in on the same run that produces the six criticals.

Same class as #1732 (IntegrityCheck opening red on a stock install): a check that is red out of the box teaches users to ignore it.

Reproduction

1. On an install whose TELOS sources are still the shipped templates, run bun LIFEOS/TOOLS/GenerateTelosSummary.ts.
2. Observe ## Missions, ## Active Goals (2026), ## Problems Being Solved, ## Strategies, ## Active Narratives and ## Personal Challenges emitted with no content.
3. Run bun LIFEOS/TOOLS/ContextAudit.ts. PRINCIPAL_TELOS.md reports 6 critical.

Suggested fix

Apply the #1559 guard to the six remaining sections. Two need a slightly wider condition than a bare length check: Active Goals must survive when goals.active is empty but deferred/completed have content, since those lines render below the heading; Active Narratives must survive when primary is empty but secondary is not.

Secondary observation, not part of the fix

ContextAudit.ts emits this message for every empty section:

message: `## ${heading} section is empty - generator bug (likely LEGACY_FILE_TO_SECTION case mismatch in GenerateTelosSummary.ts)`

The cause is hardcoded rather than computed, and a case mismatch is not reachable: loadTelosSections() stores every heading via title.toLowerCase() and LEGACY_FILE_TO_SECTION values are already lowercase, so both sides of the lookup are lowercased. A critical finding naming a specific constant and file directs debugging at code that is behaving correctly. Kept out of the fix because it is a different file and a different concern; happy to open it separately if useful.

Environment

LifeOS 7.40.4, main at ce046f2. macOS, bun 1.3.14.

[bnkath2o]

Fix proposed in #1887 — applies the #1559 guard to the six remaining sections, with the two wider conditions described above for Active Goals and Active Narratives.

[danielmiessler]

Fixed in our source; details on the PR. Lands in the next release. Thank you.