Workspace Health. Reading the System's Vital Signs

Overview, recommendations, and review history are diagnostic, here's how to read them.

Foundry surfaces four diagnostic views that, taken together, tell you whether the operating system is running well:

• Overview, current macro state. Today's snapshot.


• Recommendations, structural diagnostics. What rules are firing right now.


• Focus, capacity and energy sustainability.


• Review History, patterns across 6+ months of weekly snapshots.

Overview is a single screen of vital signs. The values that matter:

Active Projects. Count + energy badge mix. A healthy founder shows 1-3 active projects with at least one COMPOUNDING badge.

Open Commitments. Total open, with overdue highlighted. Healthy: ≤10 open, 0 overdue. Concerning: 15+ open or any overdue >7 days.

To Triage. RAW + IN_TRIAGE count. Healthy: <10. Concerning: >20 (you're capturing faster than you're processing).

Decisions Due. Decisions with revisit dates past. Healthy: 0. Concerning: anything >2 (you're not closing learning loops).

Days Since Review. Healthy: 0-7. Drift indicator: 8-14. Cadence broken: 15+.

The page is read-only on purpose. It's a thermometer, not a control panel.

Each of the 8 recommendation types maps to a specific failure mode. When one fires, the workspace is telling you which subsystem is degraded:

• OVERLOAD_ALERT → capacity discipline is broken


• CAPACITY_WARNING → energy mix has tipped to extractive


• STALE_CAPTURES → capture/triage ratio is broken


• STALLED_TRIAGE → triage habit has slipped


• OVERDUE_REVIEW → decision learning loop is open


• REVISIT_PARKED → parked ideas are accumulating without revival decisions


• CONVERT_TO_ASSET → asset library isn't growing


• RECURRING_THEME → strategic thread emerging that may deserve a project

/reviews shows up to 26 past snapshots. The single-week view doesn't matter much, the trend across weeks is where the value lives.

A monthly habit: read the last 4 snapshots in sequence and ask:

• Was the energy stable across weeks, or did it slide?


• Are the same intentions appearing repeatedly without being checked?


• Are wins concentrated on one project, or distributed? (Concentrated = focus working. Distributed = possibly fragmented.)


• Did anything I committed to in week 1 actually ship by week 4?

Block 30 minutes once a month. The sequence:

1. Overview (5 min), read every number. Name the single weakest signal.
2. Focus (5 min), confirm the Focus Lane still belongs at Layer 2. Audit the energy mix.
3. Recommendations (10 min), resolve every High-priority alert. Dismiss Mediums you're already addressing.
4. Review History (10 min), read the last 4 snapshots. Name one pattern you didn't notice in the moment.

At the end, log a Decision with the title "Q3 month 2 check-in" and a one-paragraph summary of what you found and what (if anything) you'll change. The decision is the artifact that makes the check-in stick, without it, you've just looked at numbers.

Skipping monthly check-ins for two months in a row. The same drift pattern that breaks weekly reviews breaks monthly check-ins. Calendar-block them.

Resolving low-priority recommendations while ignoring high-priority ones. RECURRING_THEME feels productive to address. OVERLOAD_ALERT feels heavy. Most founders avoid the heavy one. Don't.

Using Today as a substitute for Overview. Today is tactical (what to do now). Overview is strategic (how the system is running). They aren't interchangeable.