Role
Makes mutations trustworthy and makes the vault fast enough to query without loading everything.
Component / Integrity
Validation & indexes
The quality gate and retrieval layer: validators, link checks, generated indexes, read models, and failure events when something cannot be safely written.
Contains
- validate_vault.py and schema checks
- Generated indexes and MOCs
- Transaction/capture runners
- Visible failure events for blocked writes
Interfaces
- Hermes verifies after edits
- Capture tools use runners/queues
- Indexes expose bounded context to agents
Maintenance rule
Validation failures should be visible events, not silent skips or partial writes.
Reliability signal
Links, frontmatter, generated indexes, and read models can be checked before trusting an output.
What goes in
Validators read committed conventions, bounded vault subsets, and generated indexes; they should not depend on hidden editor state or stale chat context.
What comes out
The useful output is a concrete pass/fail signal, changed paths, and enough diagnostics to fix the source note rather than patching downstream symptoms.
Quality check
Does the check fail loudly enough, does it name the source file to fix, and does the generated index stay rebuildable from committed inputs?
Concrete example
When an index is stale, the right fix is usually to rebuild it from the vault source and report changed paths, not to hand-edit the generated output until it looks correct.
What stays private
Share the verification philosophy and output shape, not private index contents, personal entities, or unreleased automation internals.
Failure mode: Without validation, automation silently corrupts the source of truth.