Docs/Right sidebar/Inspections

Inspections

Inspections are standing checks Minerva can run over your whole thoughtbase — links that point at nothing, notes quietly drifting out of date, sources missing the details a citation needs. The panel lists what they found, in the order worth caring about, and for many of them it can do the fixing for you. Nothing here changes a note on its own.

When the checks run

Mostly, without you asking:

When you save
A couple of seconds after any change to a note, the checks run again — so if you've just broken a link, the panel says so while you're still looking at the note that did it. A burst of changes (a folder move, a batch of AI edits) settles into one pass rather than one per file.
When you open a thoughtbase
Once at the start, so the panel has something to show the moment you open it from the right sidebar's Activity group.
Every few minutes
A quiet backstop for the checks that go off with the calendar rather than with an edit — a note becoming stale, or a stub ageing past its threshold. Nothing changes in your notes when that happens, so there'd otherwise be nothing to trigger a re-check.

There's also a Run button, if you'd rather not wait the couple of seconds — or you've changed which checks are switched on and want the list to catch up straight away.

Broken links get flagged twice, on purpose

A broken [[wiki-link]] is underlined in the editor and the preview as you type, with a quick-fix on the spot — that's live, and separate from this panel. The panel is the standing, whole-thoughtbase view: every broken link at once, including the ones in notes you haven't opened lately.

What it looks for

Every check can be switched off in Settings → Inspections if it isn't telling you anything useful.

Notes

Stale notes
Notes you haven't touched in a while, in case they've quietly gone out of date. How long "a while" is, is yours to set.

Links

Broken note links
A [[wiki-link]] pointing at a note that doesn't exist — usually a rename that left a link behind, or a typo.
Broken heading links
A link to a particular heading or block that has since been renamed or removed. The note is still there; the spot inside it isn't.
Broken citations and quotes
A cite or quote link whose source or excerpt is no longer in the thoughtbase.

Sources

Sources missing details
Sources with no author, title, or date — the fields a citation needs to come out right.
Malformed DOIs
A DOI that isn't shaped like one, so it won't resolve or look up.
Duplicate sources
Two sources with the same DOI or address — usually the same thing ingested twice from different directions.
Cited but unread
Sources you've cited without marking them read. Worth a look before you lean on them.
Long-unresolved stubs
Source stubs that have sat unfilled for a while — a reference you meant to come back to.

Reading the list

Findings are grouped by how much they matter — Concerns, then Warnings, then Info — so the top of the list is the part worth reading first. Switch the sort to By type when you'd rather work through one kind at a time (every broken link in one pass, say), and use the search box to narrow to a particular note or source.

This note, or the whole thoughtbase

The panel opens on This note, showing only findings anchored to the note you're reading — the usual case, and quiet enough to leave open while you work.

Switch to Project for everything at once. Some findings only appear there: duplicate sources, unread citations, and unfilled stubs are about your library rather than any one note, so they have no note to be anchored to.

Fixing what it finds

Many findings carry a fix, shown as a label at the end of the row — Create the note, Remove the heading, and so on. Click the row and Minerva applies it, then re-runs the checks so the row disappears if it's genuinely resolved.

Findings with no mechanical fix — a note going stale is a judgement call, not a repair — open a conversation about that finding instead, with the assistant already told what was flagged and what it suggests.

Nothing happens without you

Inspections never edit your notes on their own. A fix applies when you click its row; anything the assistant proposes in the conversation still goes through the usual review-and-approve step.

Turning checks off

A check that isn't earning its place is noise. Settings → Inspections has a switch for each one, plus the two thresholds that decide what counts as "stale" and "long-unresolved".