insane0777 / awwwards-doctor

Awwwards MCP Doctor

You are repairing the awwwards-mcp toolchain or working around it mid-task.
Work in this order: **diagnose → fix mechanically → fix parsers (if drift) →
recover the user's task**. Never delete user data; the only destructive step
(cache DB moved aside) preserves the old file in the OS temp dir.

1. Run the doctor (repo checkout)

npm run doctor             # diagnose only
npm run doctor -- --fix    # diagnose AND apply available fixes
npm run doctor -- --json   # machine-readable report

The doctor checks five things and knows how to fix the mechanical ones:

Re-run the doctor after fixing; the verdict must be HEALTHY before you claim
the MCP is repaired.

2. Fixing real parser drift (the only code-level failure)

If the doctor reports parser-drift, the anchor probes say which parser broke.
Repair sequence — keep it mechanical, verify at each step:

1. Capture the evidence: the --fix snapshot in docs/drift-*/ IS the
   new truth. (The daily GitHub Action also opens/updates a parser-drift
   tracking issue with the drifted anchor names.)

2. Locate the new anchors: open the captured HTML and find the markup
   that replaced the old anchor (search the old anchor's purpose, e.g. the
   card JSON blob, the Elements section heading, the og:image meta).

3. Re-anchor the parsers in src/parsers.ts — change the minimum needed
   (one split/indexOf/regex literal), not the surrounding logic.

4. Update the probe list in scripts/parser-drift-probe.mjs
   (PROBE_GROUPS) so the same failure is detectable next time.

5. Refresh the fixture: download the live page with the same UA the
   client uses and replace test/fixtures/listing.html (or the detail
   fixture). The offline tests run against fixtures only — a refreshed
   fixture proves the re-anchor against reality.

6. npm run typecheck && npm test — all tests must pass.

7. Commit as fix: re-anchor <parser> after awwwards.com markup change,
   reference the tracking issue.

3. End users (installed via npm, not a repo checkout)

The doctor scripts live in the repo, so for an npm-installed server:

1. Check the version notice: stderr at startup prints when a newer
   awwwards-mcp exists. Update with npm install -g awwwards-mcp@latest
   (or clear the npx cache) and restart the agent — a surprising share of
   "broken" reports are old parsers fixed in a newer release.
   AWWWARDS_AUTO_UPDATE=1 in the MCP server env opts into background
   self-update on startup.

2. Reset local state: rm -rf ~/.awwwards-mcp is safe (cache + index +
   version-check state rebuild automatically; nothing user-authored lives
   there).

3. If it still fails, it's upstream (block or drift): open an issue at the
   awwwards-mcp repo attaching the raw HTML of the failing URL.

4. Recovering the in-flight task (the reason you noticed)

The user's build/research doesn't wait for the repair. Degrade gracefully:

• Stale cache is your friend: search_sites/get_site_details serve
  cached data when live fetches fail — say so in the reply ("7-day-old
  cached data").

• BlockedError means stop, not retry: the client never retries through
  blocks; tell the user and continue with cached/alternate data.

• Capture tools down (playwright missing): fall back to
  get_site_details screenshots (CDN-served, no browser needed) until
  npm run doctor -- --fix restores chromium.

• Parser drift mid-task: results may be partially empty (e.g. details
  without palette). Surface which part is missing; don't silently present
  degraded data as complete.

• After the MCP is healthy again, re-run the failed calls and reconcile
  with whatever the fallback produced.

Close the flywheel

Repairs are the highest-value lessons — they were expensive to learn. After a successful diagnosis + fix:
node scripts/skill-memory.mjs record --skill awwwards-doctor --phase repair --symptom "..." --rule "..." [--evidence <report path>]. Distill folds recurring failure signatures into this installed copy so the next repair starts knowing them. When a rule proves out, promote --skill awwwards-doctor outputs it cleaned (no machine-local evidence paths) for the shipped-copy PR.

Anti-patterns

• Retrying blocked requests in a loop — politeness rules and block
  detection exist precisely so this doesn't hammer awwwards.com.

• Diffing raw HTML to detect drift — cosmetic page changes would false-alarm
  daily; only parser-anchor probes matter.

• "Fixing" parsers by loosening them to return empty results quietly — a
  parse that can't find its anchors must error loudly (that is the drift
  signal).

• Treating the doctor's UNHEALTHY verdict as done because one check passed.

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