The 4R Audit: Read, Run, Reality, Report

Find out if your ICM folder system actually works, not just if the folders look right.

Most audits read your files and tell you what the files say.

The 4R audit does that, then has a fresh AI with no memory do 1 real job in a copy of your workspace.

Then the 4R audit plants real mistakes to see if your guards catch them.

Then you get a plain English report with the 3 fixes that matter most, each 1 with the file and the line.

Your workspace is never changed. Not 1 byte. Everything runs in a throwaway copy.

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The 4 layers

1. Read. 8 questions about the structure. Do your routes go anywhere? Is every folder on the map? Is anything unsaved? Are there keys sitting in files? 6 of the 8 are answered by a script, not an opinion.
2. Run. A fresh AI that has never seen your workspace does 1 real job, cold. The AI reports every place it got stuck, with the file and line that caused it.
3. Reality. Your 3 biggest promises get tested. The audit plants a mistake each guard should catch and a clean case each guard should pass. Then the audit checks 3 lines that say "done" against the thing each 1 describes.
4. Report. The verdict in 1 sentence, the counts, the 3 fixes ranked by what each would cost you, and what the audit could not see.

No made up score out of 100. Only numbers that were counted.

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Install the 4R audit

1. Download rymac-4r-icm-audit.zip from the Releases page of this repo.
2. Unzip the zip into your Claude Code skills folder:
   • Mac or Linux: ~/.claude/skills/
   • Windows: C:\Users\YOUR-NAME\.claude\skills\ You should end up with a folder called rymac-4r-icm-audit inside skills.
3. Restart Claude Code.
4. Open Claude Code in the folder you want audited and type:

"am I crazy?"

That's the trigger. "4R audit" and "audit my ICM" work too.

If the audit doesn't start: check that the folder sits directly inside skills, not in a second folder inside skills.

What you need

• Claude Code
• bash, which Mac and Linux already have. On Windows, bash comes with Git for Windows.
• git and python make 2 of the checks sharper. The audit still runs without them.

Check the audit itself first

The 4R audit tests your guards, so the audit tests its own scripts too. Run this once after you install:

"bash ~/.claude/skills/rymac-4r-icm-audit/scripts/selftest.sh"

The self-test builds a workspace full of planted mistakes and a clean workspace, then checks that every script catches the mistakes and stays quiet on the clean 1. You want to see every line held (34 of 34 held on this version).

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Where the results go

Every audit writes a record, so the next audit can show you what changed.

• If your CLAUDE.md or CONTEXT.md names a home for 4R audits, the record goes there.
• If not, the record goes in a folder called 4r-audits next to your workspace, never inside your workspace.

Run the 4R audit every week and the report tells you if you're getting better or drifting.

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Credit

ICM, Interpretable Context Methodology, is Jake Van Clief and David McDermott's method: https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.16021

The 4R audit is RyMac's own instrument. 2 ideas in the Read layer come from Jake's own ICM audit, written fresh here: a rule that lives only in a sentence, and an example that breaks the rule printed beside the example.

Built by RyMac, USMC Veteran, at filesnfolders.com. Come say hello in the free community: https://www.skool.com/buildmarketclose/about

MIT license: free to use, share and change.