vanity-metric-auditlisted

# Vanity Metric Audit Numbers that only go up are useless for decisions. This skill enforces Eric Ries's actionable-metrics standard on any dashboard, metrics review, or update, and rebuilds reporting around cohorts so the numbers can be argued with. ## The Three Tests A metric earns its place on a dashboard only if it passes all three (The Lean Startup, "Innovation Accounting"): 1. **Actionable** — it moves when the team's specific actions change it, and a change in it maps to a cause the team controls. Total signups fail: they go up no matter what. 2. **Accessible** — everyone in the room understands what it counts and who is counted. A metric nobody can explain is a metric nobody can act on. 3. **Auditable** — the number can be traced to real events. If the team distrusts the data, they will revert to their own opinions. Anything that fails a test is a vanity metric: it flatters, it does not inform. ## Modes ### Audit mode (default — user pastes a dashboard, KPI list, or metrics update) 1. Read `references/vanity-metric-taxonomy.md` before classifying anything. 2. Number every metric in order. 3. Classify each: ACTIONABLE, VANITY, or MASKED (an actionable metric presented in a vanity form, such as retention shown as a cumulative chart — this one is fixable). 4. For each VANITY or MASKED metric: one-line why, the failure test it breaks, and the cohort-based replacement. 5. Score the dashboard: percentage of metrics that are actionable as presented. Ve