Evidence preflight¶
Preflight checks your exhibits, letters and drafts for what a reviewer would notice, so you can fix it before anyone else reads the file.
What it is¶
Preflight is a fixed set of rules that read your workspace files. It uses no AI model, so the same files always give the same issues.
Each issue has a severity, a title in plain words, a detail line, and links to the exact claims, exhibits, letters or drafts involved, with values and dates where they differ.
Severity says how likely a reader is to notice the issue. It says nothing about your case's chances: there is no score and no probability.
Run it¶
On the Evidence page, press Run preflight in the Preflight panel (Run again after
the first time). The panel shows how many issues are open at each severity and how many exhibits and claims were
checked. The report is saved in data/preflight.json.
From the terminal, areao1 preflight runs the same checks, saves the same file and prints the open issues.
Preflight never blocks anything¶
An open issue doesn't stop you from accepting, uploading, drafting a letter or building the review packet. It's a list for you to read, not a gate.
The rules¶
| Rule | Severity | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|---|
| Outdated value cited | high | A document presents an older value as current: it cites a value a newer one replaced, and either the old value has no date, or the document speaks from after the newer value (a letter or draft, or an exhibit dated later) without citing the newer one. A document from back then citing the value it had then is a record of that time, and isn't flagged. | Cite the newer value, or say the date of the old one. |
| Unsupported claim cited | high | A letter or draft cites a claim that isn't approved, or doesn't exist in memory. | Approve the claim in the Inbox or Memory, or redraft without it. |
| Facts disagree (names) | high | Approved claims give different names for the same person or organization. | Find which document is wrong and correct it. |
| Facts disagree (titles, employers, dates) | medium | Approved claims give different job titles or employers for the same subject, the same event has two dates, or an exhibit's date is more than three days from the event its source describes. | If it changed over time, that's fine: make sure each document is dated. Otherwise fix the wrong one. |
| Metric differs | medium | Documents cite different values of the same figure, such as a panel size. A metric that changes over time (readers, stars, citations, downloads) isn't flagged when every value is dated: 40,000 readers in 2024 and 52,000 in 2025 are both true. | Find which document is wrong, or date each value. |
| Invited, not completed | medium | An exhibit is at invited with no matching completed exhibit, or an activity at accepted has no completion proof linked in its proof checklist. |
Save the thank-you, certificate or program once it's done. |
| No primary copy | medium | An exhibit is only a capture (.md, .html, .htm or .txt) with no PDF, image, .eml or .docx copy from the same address or linked to it. |
Save the page or email as a PDF (or the original .eml) and upload it. |
| Fact without an exhibit | low | An approved, current claim that no exhibit cites. One issue per person or entity. | File the primary document behind it. |
| No document date | low | An exhibit's date is unconfirmed, or is only the day it was filed with no dated claim behind it. | Set the date the document shows (Set date or Change date on the exhibit), or run areao1 repair-dates. |
Names, titles and employers are compared after normalizing case, punctuation, company suffixes and common abbreviations, so "Sr. Engineer" and "Senior Engineer" don't conflict.
Reading the panel¶
Issues are sorted high, then medium, then low. Low-severity issues are hidden until you press Show N low-severity issues. Each issue shows up to five links; +N more shows the rest. A link opens the claim in Memory, the exhibit's criterion on Evidence, the Letters page, or the proof checklist.
Dismiss an issue¶
If an issue isn't a problem, press Not a problem…, say why, and press Dismiss. The reason is required.
A dismissed issue stays in data/preflight.json and is listed under Show N dismissed issues with your reason.
A later run keeps the dismissal as long as it finds the same issue: the same rule about the same document, person or
exhibit. A different issue, even a similar one, shows up open.
Where issues show up¶
- the Preflight panel on Evidence,
areao1 preflightin the terminal,- the
run_preflighttool, for the in-app agent and MCP clients: it checks fresh and is read-only, so it saves nothing, - the review packet.
In the review packet¶
The packet always includes the open issues, so your attorney sees what you saw. Building the packet runs the checks fresh and leaves out the issues you dismissed.
In the packet's PDF and .docx, a low-severity rule with more than three issues becomes one row, "N similar
issues", naming the first three. The packet's preflight.json keeps every open issue in full.
The design is recorded in ADR 0018. Whether the evidence is enough is for your attorney to assess. See the legal disclaimer.