Recognize the pattern before it repeats.

A duplicate payment. A renewal without a next step. An approval that never reached the record. Explore the patterns the business can look for in connected evidence.

39 checks94 failure patternsCatalog 2026.09.1

This catalog describes what each check looks for and the sources it needs. A listed check is not proof that it is enabled, or that your company’s evidence is complete.

What earns attention

39 checks in the catalog

Money

Where money leaks, stalls, or drifts from what was agreed.

Money vertical

Leak · Risk · Opportunity

Reads figures, currencies, and terms out of ordinary prose and raises the concrete money failures: a duplicate payment, a missed discount, a stalled receivable, a dormant vendor, a seat nobody uses.

Needs Any connected source · Billing system

Duplicate payment
The same vendor paid the same amount twice inside a short window.
Duplicate charge
A customer charged the same amount twice in the billing system.
Disputed charge
A payment under dispute or chargeback with money at stake.
Stalled receivable
An invoice past its terms with no payment or follow-up on record.
Discount window
An early-payment or volume discount still open, or one that was missed.
Dormant vendor
A vendor still paid or contracted with no activity on record.
Recoverable spend
Spend the record says is unused, redundant, or refundable.
Unused seat
A paid license or seat assigned to someone who no longer uses it or has left.

Background

The gap between a ranking by severity and a ranking by dollars, and the finding that most money failures are stated in plain prose long before any ledger shows them.

Duplicate payment. The same vendor paid the same amount twice inside a short window.

Duplicate charge. A customer charged the same amount twice in the billing system.

Disputed charge. A payment under dispute or chargeback with money at stake.

Stalled receivable. An invoice past its terms with no payment or follow-up on record.

Discount window. An early-payment or volume discount still open, or one that was missed.

Dormant vendor. A vendor still paid or contracted with no activity on record.

Recoverable spend. Spend the record says is unused, redundant, or refundable.

Unused seat. A paid license or seat assigned to someone who no longer uses it or has left.

Background. The gap between a ranking by severity and a ranking by dollars, and the finding that most money failures are stated in plain prose long before any ledger shows them.

Marketing efficiency

Risk

Catches paid spend climbing while the demos or leads it buys fall, so a rising cost per demo is raised before it becomes a quarter's story.

Needs Documents · Chat

Efficiency slide
Spend up and conversion down in the same marketing context, or an explicit rise in cost per lead or demo.

Background

A review workspace where the cost per booked demo roughly quintupled over three weeks and every weekly tracker row looked ordinary on its own.

Efficiency slide. Spend up and conversion down in the same marketing context, or an explicit rise in cost per lead or demo.

Background. A review workspace where the cost per booked demo roughly quintupled over three weeks and every weekly tracker row looked ordinary on its own.

Work and commitments

Dated promises, targets, measures, and the trend of whether they land.

Deadline sweep

Prediction

Lets the clock itself wake the record: a commitment past its date with nothing showing it landed, a target that slid into the past, or a downstream date at risk because an upstream one lapsed.

Needs Any connected source

Lapsed commitment
A dated promise whose date passed with no fulfilling evidence since.
Overdue target
A work item whose stated target is past and whose status evidence has gone quiet.
Blocked by an upstream lapse
A commitment approaching its date while something it depends on is already overdue.

Background

A work map that showed a target seventeen days gone as a calm upcoming event, because the passage of time was not treated as evidence.

Lapsed commitment. A dated promise whose date passed with no fulfilling evidence since.

Overdue target. A work item whose stated target is past and whose status evidence has gone quiet.

Blocked by an upstream lapse. A commitment approaching its date while something it depends on is already overdue.

Background. A work map that showed a target seventeen days gone as a calm upcoming event, because the passage of time was not treated as evidence.

Commitment slip forecast

Prediction

Projects whether a commitment still ahead will land, from the organization's own base rate, whether the subject is moving, and how close the date is, and raises the likely slip while there is time to act.

Needs Any connected source

Likely slip
A future commitment whose computed probability of missing its date crosses the bar.

Background

A prediction tier whose only producer fired after the date had passed, when a forecast is only useful before it.

Likely slip. A future commitment whose computed probability of missing its date crosses the bar.

Background. A prediction tier whose only producer fired after the date had passed, when a forecast is only useful before it.

Commitment on track

Prediction

The other side of the slip forecast: a commitment the evidence says is moving and likely to land, kept under its own calibration so good news is graded separately from bad.

Needs Any connected source

On track
A future commitment with a low computed slip probability and progress on record.

Background

A one-sided intelligence layer that only ever brought bad news, so its silence could mean either all is well or nothing can be seen.

On track. A future commitment with a low computed slip probability and progress on record.

Background. A one-sided intelligence layer that only ever brought bad news, so its silence could mean either all is well or nothing can be seen.

Execution trend

Risk

Reads the slope rather than a snapshot: commitments landing less reliably, decisions turning out worse, approvals taking longer, window over window.

Needs Any connected source · Governance gateway

Fulfillment slipping
The share of commitments landing on time fell from one window to the next.
Decisions worsening
Graded decisions are turning out worse than in the prior window.
Approvals slowing
The time from a gate opening to its decision is lengthening.

Background

Organizations that looked fine on every snapshot while the direction was the story, and no single lapse or gate was the finding.

Fulfillment slipping. The share of commitments landing on time fell from one window to the next.

Decisions worsening. Graded decisions are turning out worse than in the prior window.

Approvals slowing. The time from a gate opening to its decision is lengthening.

Background. Organizations that looked fine on every snapshot while the direction was the story, and no single lapse or gate was the finding.

Declared measures

Risk

Holds a declared number to its declared target and cadence: the latest reading on the wrong side of the target, or no reading arriving when one was due.

Needs Declared measures · Any connected source

Off target
The latest reading is past the tolerance on the wrong side of the target.
Silent measure
No reading for twice the declared cadence since the last one.

Background

A registry of KPIs with definitions and targets in a competing product, and its warning about five measures all named the same thing.

Off target. The latest reading is past the tolerance on the wrong side of the target.

Silent measure. No reading for twice the declared cadence since the last one.

Background. A registry of KPIs with definitions and targets in a competing product, and its warning about five measures all named the same thing.

Measure forecast

Prediction

Projects a declared measure to its target date from its recent readings and raises the likely miss while the date is still ahead.

Needs Declared measures

Projected miss
A least-squares projection over recent readings lands outside the tolerance at the target date.

Background

Goal trajectory deferred until progress had a unit; a declared measure is the unit.

Projected miss. A least-squares projection over recent readings lands outside the tolerance at the target date.

Background. Goal trajectory deferred until progress had a unit; a declared measure is the unit.

Silence

Risk

Catches the undated lapse: an account, a person, or a recurring process that had a rhythm and went quiet past its own cadence.

Needs Any connected source

Rhythm break
A customer or person heard from on a regular cadence has gone silent past it.
Process stopped
A recurring review, close, or report that quietly stopped recurring.

Background

The operator's instinct that a customer heard from weekly has now been quiet a month, an absence no new document ever announces.

Rhythm break. A customer or person heard from on a regular cadence has gone silent past it.

Process stopped. A recurring review, close, or report that quietly stopped recurring.

Background. The operator's instinct that a customer heard from weekly has now been quiet a month, an absence no new document ever announces.

Concentration

Risk

Names the risk of nothing going wrong yet: revenue on one customer, the operation downstream of one hub, the at-risk work on one desk, or one person as the only voice on a system.

Needs Any connected source

Revenue concentration
One customer carries most of the evidenced revenue.
Dependency hub
Many things the record depends on point at one entity.
Accountability concentration
Most of the at-risk owned work sits with one person.
Sole operator
One author is under nearly all the evidence about a load-bearing system.
One-voice ground
System-of-record artifacts come from a single authorship.
Human hub
A person everything routes through with no evidenced second responder.
Unmanaged external dependency
Day-to-day work names a service with no connected integration.

Background

A company that could not restart its own system years after the one engineer who understood it left, and a firm whose production ran off one personal cloud account.

Revenue concentration. One customer carries most of the evidenced revenue.

Dependency hub. Many things the record depends on point at one entity.

Accountability concentration. Most of the at-risk owned work sits with one person.

Sole operator. One author is under nearly all the evidence about a load-bearing system.

One-voice ground. System-of-record artifacts come from a single authorship.

Human hub. A person everything routes through with no evidenced second responder.

Unmanaged external dependency. Day-to-day work names a service with no connected integration.

Background. A company that could not restart its own system years after the one engineer who understood it left, and a firm whose production ran off one personal cloud account.

People and ownership

Who is accountable, who carries too much, and who has left.

Capacity

Risk

Asks whether a person can land what is due to them, against the rate the record shows them landing, so four commitments this month reads differently for someone who lands one.

Needs Any connected source

Overcommitted
Commitments due inside the window exceed the person's evidenced completion rate.

Background

An overload count that measured what one person carried but could not say whether they had ever landed that much.

Overcommitted. Commitments due inside the window exceed the person's evidenced completion rate.

Background. An overload count that measured what one person carried but could not say whether they had ever landed that much.

Ownership health

Risk

Reads who is accountable as one relation and raises the three failures an operator catches at a glance: critical work nobody owns, a person who owns too much at-risk work, and obligations still owned by someone who has left.

Needs Any connected source

Unowned critical work
A goal or project off the rails with no accountable owner.
Overloaded owner
One person accountable for too much at-risk work at once.
Departed owner
Obligations still owned by someone the evidence says has left.

Background

Ownership signals scattered across goals, work maps, and graph edges that nothing read as one relation.

Unowned critical work. A goal or project off the rails with no accountable owner.

Overloaded owner. One person accountable for too much at-risk work at once.

Departed owner. Obligations still owned by someone the evidence says has left.

Background. Ownership signals scattered across goals, work maps, and graph edges that nothing read as one relation.

Documents and records

The files themselves: stale, forked, exposed, orphaned, or acting as an unmanaged system.

Document hygiene

Risk

Reads the record about the documents themselves: files that rotted while still looking authoritative, forked copies, links open to anyone, orphaned owners, personal data at rest, and paper the record says should exist and does not.

Needs Document store

Rot
An old document most of whose facts have since been superseded, or that names departed people or retired systems.
Fork
Distinct documents sharing one working name.
Copies
Identical copies of one document, folded into one row.
Exposure
A link open to anyone, a share with an outside domain, personal webmail, a departed member, or the whole organization for a sensitive title.
Orphaned
The provider's owner is a departed member.
Personal data concentration
A document holding many strong personal identifiers.
Machine authored
A governing document last edited by a bot or declaring itself AI-generated.
Dead links
Most of a document's outside links no longer resolve.
Cited while flagged
Answers keep citing a document with an open rot, fork, or exposure finding.
Dormant
Documents untouched past the dormant horizon, folded into one row.
Review overdue
A governing document not touched inside its review cycle.
Contract missing
An account the record calls won or signed with no contract-class document anywhere.

Background

Practitioner surveys and audit findings where stale documentation, version confusion, permission sprawl, and orphaned files were the most cited failures organizations report about their own data.

Rot. An old document most of whose facts have since been superseded, or that names departed people or retired systems.

Fork. Distinct documents sharing one working name.

Copies. Identical copies of one document, folded into one row.

Exposure. A link open to anyone, a share with an outside domain, personal webmail, a departed member, or the whole organization for a sensitive title.

Orphaned. The provider's owner is a departed member.

Personal data concentration. A document holding many strong personal identifiers.

Machine authored. A governing document last edited by a bot or declaring itself AI-generated.

Dead links. Most of a document's outside links no longer resolve.

Cited while flagged. Answers keep citing a document with an open rot, fork, or exposure finding.

Dormant. Documents untouched past the dormant horizon, folded into one row.

Review overdue. A governing document not touched inside its review cycle.

Contract missing. An account the record calls won or signed with no contract-class document anywhere.

Background. Practitioner surveys and audit findings where stale documentation, version confusion, permission sprawl, and orphaned files were the most cited failures organizations report about their own data.

Citation integrity

Risk

Chases the formal references in a document to the public indices where real ones live and raises the document whose references show a high unresolvable density.

Needs Documents

Unresolvable references
A document whose formal references largely fail to resolve against public indices.

Background

A published government review that cited academic papers which do not exist and a court quote never spoken, caught only by an outside academic.

Unresolvable references. A document whose formal references largely fail to resolve against public indices.

Background. A published government review that cited academic papers which do not exist and a court quote never spoken, caught only by an outside academic.

Shadow systems of record

Risk

Recognizes the busy spreadsheet full of accounts and money figures that has quietly become a system of record with no controls, no audit trail, and one editor.

Needs Document store

Spreadsheet as system of record
A frequently edited sheet naming many accounts or money figures, louder when no billing system is connected.

Background

Finance functions that collect cross-unit data in spreadsheets fewer than half call well controlled, and the customer list only one person understands.

Spreadsheet as system of record. A frequently edited sheet naming many accounts or money figures, louder when no billing system is connected.

Background. Finance functions that collect cross-unit data in spreadsheets fewer than half call well controlled, and the customer list only one person understands.

Customers and revenue systems

Accounts, renewals, pipeline hygiene, and systems that disagree about a customer.

Customer risk

Risk

Catches the customer who is loudly unhappy: churn language and friction accumulating in live evidence, and the sharper case of a renewal due while that friction is unresolved.

Needs Any connected source

Churn language
Two or more friction or churn signals live on one account.
Renewal exposed
A renewal inside the window while friction on the account is unresolved.

Background

A silence detector that caught the customer who went quiet and nothing that caught the one asking to leave.

Churn language. Two or more friction or churn signals live on one account.

Renewal exposed. A renewal inside the window while friction on the account is unresolved.

Background. A silence detector that caught the customer who went quiet and nothing that caught the one asking to leave.

Renewal horizon

Risk

Raises the renewal that is simply quiet: a contract or subscription date inside the horizon with nothing recorded about it since the date was noted, louder when it auto-renews or a notice window applies.

Needs Any connected source

Quiet renewal
A renewal-shaped commitment inside the horizon with no newer claim on its subject for the silence window.

Background

Mid-market surveys where most companies had an unwanted auto-renewal in the past year, including a six-figure renewal for software no longer used because nobody calendared the notice clause.

Quiet renewal. A renewal-shaped commitment inside the horizon with no newer claim on its subject for the silence window.

Background. Mid-market surveys where most companies had an unwanted auto-renewal in the past year, including a six-figure renewal for software no longer used because nobody calendared the notice clause.

CRM hygiene

Risk

Reads each deal's own version history and raises the shapes of quiet pipeline decay: open past its close date, close date pushed again and again, late stage with no activity.

Needs CRM

Stale open deal
An open deal whose stated close date passed more than a week ago.
Pushed close date
A deal whose close date has taken three or more distinct values.
Dormant late-stage deal
An open late-stage deal with no new version inside the dormant window.

Background

RevOps accounts of pipelines where half the qualification fields were empty and a third of opportunities slipped, until leadership stopped trusting the forecast.

Stale open deal. An open deal whose stated close date passed more than a week ago.

Pushed close date. A deal whose close date has taken three or more distinct values.

Dormant late-stage deal. An open late-stage deal with no new version inside the dormant window.

Background. RevOps accounts of pipelines where half the qualification fields were empty and a third of opportunities slipped, until leadership stopped trusting the forecast.

Cross-system reconciliation

Risk

Compares what one connected system says about an account with what another says and raises the disagreement itself: won with no billing, canceled in billing yet active in the CRM, two figures for one metric, work before signature.

Needs CRM · Billing system · Help desk · Documents

Won without billing
An account the record calls won or signed with no trace in a connected billing system.
Status disagreement
Billing says canceled or past due while another source calls the account active, or the reverse.
Metric disagreement
Two sources state different figures for the same named metric at about the same time.
Unpaid and unworked
A failed or past-due payment nobody has followed up.
Missing counterpart
An account known to one system with no counterpart in another that should hold it.
Billed mismatch
The monthly figure a contract states differs from what billing charges by more than the tolerance.
Work before signature
Delivery activity on an account the record still calls unsigned.
Scope creep
Work described beyond the signed scope with no change order on record.

Background

Companies staffing a role to verify closed-won amounts against contracts by hand, and the founder's deck, the sales dashboard, and the P&L each stating a different revenue figure for the same month.

Won without billing. An account the record calls won or signed with no trace in a connected billing system.

Status disagreement. Billing says canceled or past due while another source calls the account active, or the reverse.

Metric disagreement. Two sources state different figures for the same named metric at about the same time.

Unpaid and unworked. A failed or past-due payment nobody has followed up.

Missing counterpart. An account known to one system with no counterpart in another that should hold it.

Billed mismatch. The monthly figure a contract states differs from what billing charges by more than the tolerance.

Work before signature. Delivery activity on an account the record still calls unsigned.

Scope creep. Work described beyond the signed scope with no change order on record.

Background. Companies staffing a role to verify closed-won amounts against contracts by hand, and the founder's deck, the sales dashboard, and the P&L each stating a different revenue figure for the same month.

Process and delivery

How work moves between people and systems, and where it stalls, repeats, or drifts.

Process anti-patterns

Risk

Reads the run log of how approvals and reviews actually resolve and names the three classic failures: a step that approves everything yet adds delay, one person deciding nearly all of it, and the same action resolved several inconsistent ways.

Needs Governance gateway · Code host · Issue tracker

Approval theater
A step that approves everything and rejects nothing while adding real delay.
Single-person bottleneck
One person decides the lion's share of a process's runs.
Process variance
The same action resolved several inconsistent ways.

Background

The process improvement literature on approval theater, bottlenecks, and variance, read off the approval gates and pull request reviews the record already keeps.

Approval theater. A step that approves everything and rejects nothing while adding real delay.

Single-person bottleneck. One person decides the lion's share of a process's runs.

Process variance. The same action resolved several inconsistent ways.

Background. The process improvement literature on approval theater, bottlenecks, and variance, read off the approval gates and pull request reviews the record already keeps.

Object lifecycle

Risk

Reads the typed state changes of issues, tickets, pull requests, and deals as an event log and raises the object stalled past the organization's own norm, reopened again and again, or dropped between two systems.

Needs Issue tracker · Code host · Help desk · CRM

Stalled against the norm
An open object whose time in its current state exceeds the organization's 90th percentile for that type and stage.
Reopened more than once
An object that left a terminal state for an open one at least twice inside 90 days.
Dropped handoff
Done on the board but still open in the code, or merged in the code but still open on the board.

Background

Object-centric process mining, where every business object has typed state changes over time, and the dropped handoffs that follow when two systems each think the other owns the next step.

Stalled against the norm. An open object whose time in its current state exceeds the organization's 90th percentile for that type and stage.

Reopened more than once. An object that left a terminal state for an open one at least twice inside 90 days.

Dropped handoff. Done on the board but still open in the code, or merged in the code but still open on the board.

Background. Object-centric process mining, where every business object has typed state changes over time, and the dropped handoffs that follow when two systems each think the other owns the next step.

Incident recurrence

Risk

Raises the second incident on the same system while the first one's post-mortem actions are still open.

Needs Documents · Chat

Repeat incident
Two or more incident write-ups about one system inside the window, louder when the earlier actions are still open.

Background

A study of catalogued failures in which 77 percent recurred inside the same organization, and root-cause reviews whose recommendations were mostly rated weak.

Repeat incident. Two or more incident write-ups about one system inside the window, louder when the earlier actions are still open.

Background. A study of catalogued failures in which 77 percent recurred inside the same organization, and root-cause reviews whose recommendations were mostly rated weak.

Deploy drift

Risk

Judges the latest production deployment against the default branch's commit trail and raises production sitting behind the main branch or running a sha the branch's lineage cannot account for.

Needs Code host

Production behind main
Production has not shipped the main branch for the drift window.
Deployed sha outside lineage
The deployed sha is absent from the ingested default-branch history.

Background

A company assembled from acquisitions where everyone with tribal knowledge had left and nobody knew which branch was deployed, until deploying master broke the business.

Production behind main. Production has not shipped the main branch for the drift window.

Deployed sha outside lineage. The deployed sha is absent from the ingested default-branch history.

Background. A company assembled from acquisitions where everyone with tribal knowledge had left and nobody knew which branch was deployed, until deploying master broke the business.

Release provenance

Risk

Cross-references deployed-version claims from any source against the repository's release tags and newest commit, and raises a shipment no repository can account for.

Needs Code host · Chat

Unaccounted shipment
A shipped version with no matching release tag, or a shipment newer than the last change on record.

Background

A regulated company that shipped a binary demonstrably newer than the source it held, while a departed contractor held the real source.

Unaccounted shipment. A shipped version with no matching release tag, or a shipment newer than the last change on record.

Background. A regulated company that shipped a binary demonstrably newer than the source it held, while a departed contractor held the real source.

Governance and controls

Rules, approvals, and declared controls, and whether the record shows them working.

Declared controls heartbeat

Risk

Compares what the organization says a control should be doing against the evidence connected sources actually show, and raises the control with no heartbeat or no owner.

Needs Declared controls · Any connected source

Silent control
An active control with no matching evidence for a multiple of its declared cadence.
Unowned control
A declared control with no resolvable owner.

Background

A production database deleted at a large code host in 2017, where recovery found all five backup mechanisms broken and nobody had been alerted that nobody was being alerted.

Silent control. An active control with no matching evidence for a multiple of its declared cadence.

Unowned control. A declared control with no resolvable owner.

Background. A production database deleted at a large code host in 2017, where recovery found all five backup mechanisms broken and nobody had been alerted that nobody was being alerted.

Approvals recorded only in prose

Risk

Raises the consequential approval described in a sentence somewhere with no approval gate on record to match it, so the audit question of who approved this and when has an answer.

Needs Chat · Documents · Governance gateway

Untracked approval
A live claim that something was approved, authorized, or signed off, from a non-governance source, with no matching gate.
Approvals not being recorded
One folded row counting untracked approvals in a workspace that has never used the gateway.

Background

The most common SOC 2 exceptions: access granted on a chat request, a purchase green-lit verbally, an approval whose only artifact is an email chain that might have been deleted.

Untracked approval. A live claim that something was approved, authorized, or signed off, from a non-governance source, with no matching gate.

Approvals not being recorded. One folded row counting untracked approvals in a workspace that has never used the gateway.

Background. The most common SOC 2 exceptions: access granted on a chat request, a purchase green-lit verbally, an approval whose only artifact is an email chain that might have been deleted.

Chronic rule violation

Risk

Keeps count when a standing policy is violated again and again with no enforcement and no amendment, and re-raises one step louder each time the ledger gains a newer event after a dismissal.

Needs Active policies · Any connected source

Chronic violation
A policy whose window holds enough violation events across enough distinct occasions, unchanged and unenforced.

Background

The 2003 Columbia accident report, where a written design requirement was violated on every flight for 22 years and each dismissal made the next one easier.

Chronic violation. A policy whose window holds enough violation events across enough distinct occasions, unchanged and unenforced.

Background. The 2003 Columbia accident report, where a written design requirement was violated on every flight for 22 years and each dismissal made the next one easier.

AI agents and automation

Registered agents behaving outside their authority, and automation nobody registered.

Agent activity

Risk

Turns a registered agent's behavior into findings beside everyone else's: denied attempts, repeated outcome failures, actions outside the gateway trending up, gates left waiting, and actions that relied on a claim since superseded.

Needs Registered agents · Governance gateway

Authority exceedance
An agent repeatedly attempting actions its authority denies.
Outcome regression
An agent's actions failing often enough to be a pattern.
Outside the gateway
Observed actions outside the governed path trending up.
Approval latency
An agent's gates left waiting on a human decision.
Stale basis
A recent agent action whose cited claim has since gone non-live.

Background

Agent monitoring that wrote to the prediction-only attention queue and sat outside the calibrated, ownable finding path every other signal used.

Authority exceedance. An agent repeatedly attempting actions its authority denies.

Outcome regression. An agent's actions failing often enough to be a pattern.

Outside the gateway. Observed actions outside the governed path trending up.

Approval latency. An agent's gates left waiting on a human decision.

Stale basis. A recent agent action whose cited claim has since gone non-live.

Background. Agent monitoring that wrote to the prediction-only attention queue and sat outside the calibrated, ownable finding path every other signal used.

Shadow agent discovery

Risk

Finds the automation nobody registered: signals whose actor reads as a bot, service account, webhook, or pipeline identity with no matching agent on the registry.

Needs Any connected source · Registered agents

Unregistered automation
A machine-shaped actor above the volume floor with no registered agent matching it.

Background

The first three controls every cautious buyer asks for, one of which is discovering the automation already acting in connected systems.

Unregistered automation. A machine-shaped actor above the volume floor with no registered agent matching it.

Background. The first three controls every cautious buyer asks for, one of which is discovering the automation already acting in connected systems.

Security and data handling

Credentials, sensitive data, off-record channels, and statutory clocks.

Data handling

Risk

Raises a stated data-handling slip after the fact: sensitive data handled with broad exposure, including pasted into a public AI tool, judged against the governing data policy.

Needs Any connected source

Sensitive data exposed
One live claim carrying a handling action, a sensitive object, and a broad-exposure signal together.

Background

A 2023 case where engineers pasted proprietary source code and a meeting transcript into a public chatbot within weeks of it being permitted, discovered only through internal reporting afterward.

Sensitive data exposed. One live claim carrying a handling action, a sensitive object, and a broad-exposure signal together.

Background. A 2023 case where engineers pasted proprietary source code and a meeting transcript into a public chatbot within weeks of it being permitted, discovered only through internal reporting afterward.

External credential circulation

Risk

Raises a live claim that carries a credential shape together with a domain that is not one of the workspace's declared systems, the sign that someone else's login is circulating internally.

Needs Any connected source · Declared systems

Outside credentials circulating
Credential-shaped material and a domain the workspace does not declare, in one live claim.

Background

An employee who arrived from a competitor carrying still-valid logins, emailed them to executives, and watched colleagues use them for a year, until litigation.

Outside credentials circulating. Credential-shaped material and a domain the workspace does not declare, in one live claim.

Background. An employee who arrived from a competitor carrying still-valid logins, emailed them to executives, and watched colleagues use them for a year, until litigation.

Credentials in artifacts

Risk

Scans content at the top of ingest for working credential shapes, redacts them before anything durable exists, and raises one critical per artifact on an authoritative source.

Needs Any connected source

Pasted credentials
A connection string, API key, private key block, or assignment-style secret found in an ingested artifact.

Background

A new graduate's first day in 2017, when an onboarding document carried live production database credentials as example values and a copy-paste destroyed the database.

Pasted credentials. A connection string, API key, private key block, or assignment-style secret found in an ingested artifact.

Background. A new graduate's first day in 2017, when an onboarding document carried live production database credentials as example values and a copy-paste destroyed the database.

Self-referential kill switch

Risk

Scans added commit lines for code that checks the committer's own directory account status, the shape of a kill switch planted to fire on offboarding.

Needs Code host

Self-referential account check
A patch line joining a directory-system term, an account-status lookup, and a token of the committer's own identity.

Background

A 2019 case where a developer planted code that checked whether his own directory account was still enabled and locked out thousands of users the day he was offboarded.

Self-referential account check. A patch line joining a directory-system term, an account-status lookup, and a token of the committer's own identity.

Background. A 2019 case where a developer planted code that checked whether his own directory account was still enabled and locked out thousands of users the day he was offboarded.

Off-channel drift

Risk

Catches the moment a business conversation leaves the archived record: text me, take it to WhatsApp, call my cell, said inside a connected channel about a deal, a price, or a customer.

Needs Chat

Conversation moved off record
A live claim whose words move a business conversation to an unrecorded channel.

Background

Regulators fining more than a hundred firms over two billion dollars since 2021 for business conducted on personal messaging apps outside the archived record.

Conversation moved off record. A live claim whose words move a business conversation to an unrecorded channel.

Background. Regulators fining more than a hundred firms over two billion dollars since 2021 for business conducted on personal messaging apps outside the archived record.

Privacy request clock

Risk

Counts the statutory days on a data subject's access or erasure request mentioned anywhere a connector reads, and escalates when the deadline passes with no fulfillment on record.

Needs Chat · Help desk · Documents

Request clock running
A subject request with no fulfillment language since, inside the warning window or past its deadline.

Background

A benchmark in which 58 percent of companies missed the GDPR response deadline, and a right-of-access enforcement program past fifty actions, mostly for requests noted in a ticket where nobody counted the days.

Request clock running. A subject request with no fulfillment language since, inside the warning window or past its deadline.

Background. A benchmark in which 58 percent of companies missed the GDPR response deadline, and a right-of-access enforcement program past fifty actions, mostly for requests noted in a ticket where nobody counted the days.

Decisions and knowledge

Decisions, promises, and beliefs that outlive their basis or never reach the record.

Assumption-change re-review

Risk

Raises a decision whose cited assumption has since been superseded or retracted, so a decision does not silently outlive its basis.

Needs Any connected source

Basis changed
An open decision one of whose cited claims has gone non-live.

Background

Decisions that sat on the record made on evidence that had moved, with nobody told.

Basis changed. An open decision one of whose cited claims has gone non-live.

Background. Decisions that sat on the record made on evidence that had moved, with nobody told.

Decision outcome

Forms a grounded reading of how a matured decision turned out from the evidence that accrued after it, abstains when there is too little, and keeps its own calibration as an identity beside the finding detectors.

Needs Any connected source

Graded decision
A matured decision read as good, mixed, bad, or too early against the evidence that followed it.

Background

A record that kept the narrative of every decision and never formed its own view of whether the call aged well.

Graded decision. A matured decision read as good, mixed, bad, or too early against the evidence that followed it.

Background. A record that kept the narrative of every decision and never formed its own view of whether the call aged well.

Record gaps

Risk

Raises the decision that settled in chat and never reached a document, the customer promise made on a call that never reached the order form, and the meeting action items with no owner or date.

Needs Chat · Documents

Decision in chat
A derived decision cited only from conversation sources with no document on the subject since.
Promise in chat
A customer-facing commitment made in conversation with no document about that account since.
Unowned or undated action items
Meeting notes whose commitments carry no date or no accountable owner.

Background

Business amnesia: a decision buried in four chat messages and relitigated next quarter, and surveys where most professionals say meeting tasks are regularly forgotten.

Decision in chat. A derived decision cited only from conversation sources with no document on the subject since.

Promise in chat. A customer-facing commitment made in conversation with no document about that account since.

Unowned or undated action items. Meeting notes whose commitments carry no date or no accountable owner.

Background. Business amnesia: a decision buried in four chat messages and relitigated next quarter, and surveys where most professionals say meeting tasks are regularly forgotten.

Untested assumption

Risk

Raises a standing belief in resilience that has aged for months with no drill, failover test, or game day anywhere on record.

Needs Any connected source

Untested resilience belief
An old live assertion of redundancy or failover with no post-dated exercise evidence on its subject.

Background

A 2023 outage where a control plane designed as three independent facilities went down for two days because no drill had ever exercised a complete facility failure.

Untested resilience belief. An old live assertion of redundancy or failover with no post-dated exercise evidence on its subject.

Background. A 2023 outage where a control plane designed as three independent facilities went down for two days because no drill had ever exercised a complete facility failure.

A pattern is a reason to look closer.

What happened, what it means and whether anything still needs to be done depend on the evidence. A warning is the start of the work.

This is the published catalog, version 2026.09.1. Availability and results depend on your company’s connections, configuration and record.

From a change to the brief

Start with the pattern you keep meeting.

Bring the work, the sources and the question it leaves open.

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