natnew/awesome-recursive-self-improvement/audit-list-health

Audit List Health

You are auditing README.md of awesome-recursive-self-improvement for decay. A curated list stays valuable only if every entry stays live, canonical, and in scope. The output is an audit report — apply fixes only when the maintainer asks.

Process

1. Link rot — run the network link check and collect failures:

``bash CHECK_LINKS=1 node scripts/link-check.mjs ``

For each failing URL, determine whether it moved (find the new canonical URL) or died (recommend removal or a replacement primary source).

1. Superseded preprints — for each arXiv entry, check whether a published version now exists (ACL Anthology, OpenReview, NeurIPS/ICML/ICLR proceedings). Where one does, recommend swapping to the canonical proceedings link per CONTRIBUTING.md ("prefer canonical paper, proceedings, project, or lab links").

1. Abandoned projects — for each GitHub repository entry, check whether the repo is archived, deleted, or visibly dormant in a way that breaks the claim in its description. Dormant but historically significant papers/projects stay; entries whose description claims an ongoing resource that no longer exists get flagged.

1. Description drift — spot-check entries whose source has changed (renamed papers, retitled blog posts, v2 abstracts with different claims). The description must still match the source.

1. Bar check — flag entries that, with hindsight, fail current CONTRIBUTING.md criteria (secondary source, no self-improvement mechanism, duplicate coverage). Be conservative: recommend removal only with a stated rule violation, never on taste.

Output format

## List health audit — <date>
 
| Entry       | Section   | Issue                                                                                                | Recommended action                                                        |
| ----------- | --------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| [Name](URL) | <section> | <dead link / moved / superseded by venue version / archived repo / description drift / fails rule N> | <replace URL with X / remove / reword description to Y / keep, no action> |
 
**Summary:** <n> entries checked, <n> healthy, <n> need action.

If everything is healthy, say so explicitly — an empty table with a confirmation is a valid, useful result.

Guardrails

• Report first; edit README.md only on explicit maintainer instruction.
• Never replace a primary source with a secondary one, even if the primary is awkward (e.g. a PDF on a lab CDN).
• Preserve section ordering and heading names; this audit never restructures the taxonomy (that is the taxonomy curator's job).
• When recommending a URL swap, verify the new URL resolves before recommending it.