The Decomposition Audit

Before deploying a decomposed task pipeline, audit it against four quality dimensions: coverage, coherence, redundancy, and completeness. A pipeline that passes the audit is ready for production testing. A pipeline that fails the audit has a structural problem that will produce systemic failures — fix it before writing a single sub-prompt.

1. Coverage Audit Every requirement in the original task must be addressed by at least one sub-task. Map each original requirement to the sub-task that handles it. If any requirement is not mapped, the pipeline has a coverage gap — it will not produce a complete output regardless of how well individual sub-tasks perform.
2. Coherence Audit All sub-task outputs must be combinable into a coherent whole by the assembly step. Incoherence: sub-tasks that use different terminology for the same concept, different scales for the same metric, or different formats for the same data type. The assembly prompt cannot resolve incoherence without producing ambiguous output.
3. Redundancy Audit No two sub-tasks should produce the same output. Redundancy adds cost without adding value — and when two independent sub-tasks produce inconsistent versions of the "same" output, the assembly step must resolve the conflict. Map every sub-task output and verify uniqueness.
4. Completeness Audit The full set of sub-task outputs, when assembled, must satisfy the original task. The completeness audit is different from coverage: coverage checks that each requirement is addressed by at least one sub-task; completeness checks that the assembled outputs actually satisfy the requirement, not just that a sub-task was assigned to it.

Decomposition Audit Checklist
Task: [original task description]
Pipeline: [list of sub-tasks]

COVERAGE AUDIT:
□ List every requirement from the original task
□ Map each requirement to the sub-task(s) that address it
□ Verify no requirement is unmapped
Gaps identified: ___

COHERENCE AUDIT:
□ Check terminology consistency: same concept = same term across all sub-tasks
□ Check metric scale consistency: same scale for same measurement across sub-tasks
□ Check format consistency: same data format for same data type across sub-tasks
□ Verify the assembly prompt can combine sub-outputs without ambiguity
Inconsistencies identified: ___

REDUNDANCY AUDIT:
□ List every sub-task output (field by field)
□ Verify no output appears in more than one sub-task
□ If duplication is intentional (verification), verify the assembly prompt handles both
Redundancies identified: ___

COMPLETENESS AUDIT:
□ For each requirement, verify the mapped sub-task output explicitly satisfies it
□ Verify the assembly prompt produces output that demonstrates all requirements are met
□ Run a test case end-to-end and verify the assembled output against the original task
Completion gaps identified: ___

DEPLOY READINESS:
□ All coverage gaps resolved
□ All coherence inconsistencies resolved
□ All redundancies resolved or explicitly handled
□ Completeness verified by end-to-end test