Readiness
Readiness
Readiness shows what is done and what is missing on every project, so one person can oversee many (module readiness). Each project is judged against a checklist, and as many checks as possible are answered on their own. A shop's checks are read from the shop each night.
In the sidebar under Projects → Readiness. Needs: Projects and Tasks.
How a project is judged
- The checklist is the base list every project gets, plus an overlay for the project's kind (ecommerce, logistics, saas, content, service or internal), plus any extras for that one project. A project with no kind is judged by the base list only. An ecommerce project's overlay is a 64-item launch checklist, including post-build shop checks such as doubled products, weights, sale prices, image alt text and demo content left behind.
- Categories: every check sits in one of ten: Customer channels, Social, Presentation, Technical flow, Infrastructure, Payments, Legal, Analytics, Support and Operations.
- Phases: each check belongs to one of four phases: Setup, Launch, Run and Grow (levels L0 to L3). Phases build on each other: a category reaches Run only when every Launch and Run check passes.
- Target: the project's stage sets the phase it should have reached: idea Setup, building Launch, launched Run, scaling Grow. A project with no stage has no target. A category can be given its own target, with a reason.
Where answers come from
Each check carries a badge saying how it is answered: Max reads the shop, from the site, by a person, by an agent, or by Max itself.
- Automatically, every night and whenever someone presses Check again: what is filed under the project (domains, monitors, a shop), the project's domains and their SPF and DMARC records, facts other modules report, the brain's core text, the shop itself, and one fetch of the live site and its pages (sitemap, social links, about and FAQ pages, page speed when a PageSpeed key is set).
- By a person: checks such as "company registered" are confirmed by hand. A Done lasts for the check's freshness window.
- Never guessed: a check nobody has looked at counts as not passed. A pass older than its freshness window is stale and no longer counts. A source that cannot answer says so, for example "cannot be checked here".
What you see
The screen has three tabs, plus a page per project.
Portfolio
One row per project and one cell per category. Each cell is a phase, coloured against the target: red below it, amber when the evidence is stale or about to lapse, green at or above it. Filter by kind or stage, and sort by Furthest behind first, Lowest level first or By name.
If some projects have no kind, a card says how many. With permission to edit projects you can press Suggest kinds: a kind and stage are suggested for each, with reasons, and you accept each one or set it yourself.
Click a project to open its page.
Needs a person
A ranked queue of every failing, unproven or never-checked check at or below its project's target: critical first, then furthest behind, then longest failing. Filter by severity (critical, important, nice). One source failing for three or more projects is one line with a count. With nothing in the queue it says "Nothing needs a person".
Checklists
Shown with readiness:manage. Pick a layer (Base — every project, Kind overlays or Project extras) to see its checks. Each has Edit (title, level, severity, freshness in days, how to fix, and why you changed it) and Retire. Every change keeps a version, and retiring a check keeps its answers.
A project
A summary first: how far the project is over the phases on show, how many critical checks Block launch, and Do these first, the most important open items. If something the checks need is not linked yet, such as a shop or a domain, a Something is missing card says so with a button to link it; those checks fill in on the next run.
Then one card per category, each folding open and closed, with expand all and collapse all. Each check shows its answer in plain words (done, not done, unproven, never checked, stale or not applicable), why, the evidence and when it was last checked. Checks beyond the next phase fold under Later (N); press it to show every phase. Done checks are folded away.
What you can do
Check a project now
- Open the project from Portfolio, or press Readiness on its row in Projects.
- Press Check again. Every automatic check is answered again, and the screen says what changed. Checks only a person can answer are left alone.
Make sure everything is done
Press Make sure everything is done on a project's page. It checks the project now, opens tasks for the worst gaps (at most 15 open), gives each to the team member whose role covers it (or the owner), and lists what is left by phase. Pressing it again opens no new tasks. It is refused for a project with no kind.
Keep fix tasks in step every night
The Auto-fix switch on a project's page turns this on or off. With it on, each night's run opens tasks for what fails at or below target, at most 15 open at once unless changed, gives each to the right team member, and closes each one when its check passes. A task reopened once and failing again rests for 14 days. Starting a project from a shop kit turns it on for you.
Confirm a check by hand
- Press Confirm on the check.
- Choose Done or Not done, and write What you saw.
- Save. A Done lasts for the check's freshness window, then turns stale. A Not done stands until someone answers again.
Turn what is missing into tasks
- Press Fix on a failing check to create one task for it on the project, with why it fails and what to do.
- Press Make tasks for what's missing to do the same for every open check at or below the target.
A check that already has an open task shows "task open" and gets no second one. The task closes itself, with a comment saying why, once the check passes.
Mark a check as not applicable
- Press Not applicable.
- Write Why it does not apply, and set Applies again from if it should come back.
- Save. Press Revoke exemption to undo it. Ended exemptions are listed under Exemptions that have ended.
Set a different target for one category
Press Set target on the category, choose the target phase and say Why. Checks above it no longer count against the project.
Who can do what
| Permission | Label | Lets you |
|---|---|---|
readiness:read | See how ready projects are | Open Readiness: the portfolio, the queue and project pages |
readiness:write | Run checks, confirm, exempt and fix | Check again, Make sure everything is done, Auto-fix, Confirm, Not applicable, Set target and Fix, on projects where you are an editor or manager. Archived projects cannot be changed. |
readiness:manage | Edit readiness checklists and settings | The Checklists tab, adding and changing checks, and alert settings |
You see readiness for the projects you can see. See People, roles and permissions.
What runs on its own
| Job | When | What it does |
|---|---|---|
sweep | Every day at 02:40 UTC (40 2 * * *) | Answers every automatic check for every live project in each workspace that has Readiness, including reading each linked shop. For projects with auto-fix on, keeps their fix tasks in step. Prunes old answers (the newest of each is kept, plus 90 days of history). |
When a critical check really fails at or below the target, the project's owner and managers are told once, then not again for that failure until a cooldown (7 days unless changed) has passed. A shop whose alerts reach nobody fails its readiness check. Stale and lapsing answers go into the Readiness section of people's briefings instead of an alert. Readiness also adds its figures and its queue to the Dashboard. See Notifications and alerts.
For agents
Agents can read the portfolio and queue, run checks, confirm checks a person answers, record exemptions, set targets, turn failing checks into tasks, and keep fix tasks in step. Changes go through your approval rules. See Agents and approvals.
Read (read-only): readiness.grid, readiness.project, readiness.queue, readiness.checklists, readiness.history, readiness.settings.
Check and answer: readiness.run, readiness.attest, readiness.exempt, readiness.setTarget.
Fix: readiness.fix, readiness.ensureDone (checks now and keeps fix tasks in step; safe to call again), readiness.setAutoFix (on or off, and how many open at once, 1 to 50).
Manage: readiness.updateCheck (change, retire or add a check; a rule is checked when saved, and an unknown rule type is refused by name), readiness.updateSettings (the alert cooldown, which severities alert, and how many days ahead a lapsing answer turns amber).
readiness.attest is refused for checks answered automatically.
Over MCP the same tools are named readiness__grid, readiness__fix and so on. See API keys and MCP access.