Flare Diagnosis

Flare Diagnosis gives you a one-click health check of your entire Flare project. It scans the project on disk, runs 40+ deterministic rules, and turns the results into a plain-language report: what's broken, who it hurts (readers, writers, or the build), and what to do about it.

Everything runs locally and deterministically — no network calls, no data leaves your machine.

To run a diagnosis

1. Open a Flare project.
2. Go to the Cleanup ⚡ tab.
3. In the Project Analysis group, click Flare Diagnosis.

A progress dialog shows each scan stage; when it finishes, the report opens in its own window.

What gets checked

The rules are organized into seven factors:

• Project Integrity — filename hazards (zero-width, non-printable, or Windows-illegal characters), paths over 240 characters, case-sensitivity collisions, circular snippet references, empty topics
• Links & References — broken xrefs, broken TOC entries, broken image and snippet references, absolute paths, orphan topics, generic link text ("click here"), link casing that works on Windows but 404s on case-sensitive servers
• Reuse Hygiene — undefined or unused variables and conditions, unused snippets, duplicate and near-duplicate snippets, low snippet reuse, condition density, deep snippet nesting
• Style & Markup — undefined CSS classes used in topics, unused CSS classes, inline style= attributes, heading-hierarchy problems, images missing alt text, the same class defined in multiple stylesheets
• Content Hygiene — deep TOC nesting, overly flat folder layout, near-duplicate topics
• Asset Management — oversized images, unused images, mixed image formats
• Build Configuration — near-duplicate targets, target count vs. project size, build complexity, Flare version and output mix

Reading the report

• Verdict — the one-line summary at the top: is the project healthy, does it need work, or can something break your build? It also tells you how many findings are visible to your readers.
• What this is costing you — counts of concrete things found in the project (not abstract scores), framed by who pays the price: readers, writers, or builds.
• Your checklist — every finding as a prioritized work list, top to bottom. Each row expands to show the affected files, so you can go straight from finding to fix.

Sharing the report

Click Save HTML report… in the footer to save the full report as a standalone HTML file — handy for sharing with your team, attaching to a ticket, or keeping as a baseline to compare against after a cleanup sweep.

Tips

• Run a diagnosis before a migration or big restructure to find the landmines first.
• Save a report before and after a cleanup effort — the delta is your progress report.
• Many findings pair naturally with other Kaizen tools: inline styles → Remove Local Styling, unused snippets → Snippet Usage Report, missing alt text → Set ALT Texts.