Legacy code often cannot build locally by nature — CICS/IMS programs have no local translator and the real runtime may be a mainframe the user doesn't have. Stopping transform on a failed legacy smoke compile would block exactly those systems. - transform Step 0a: the target toolchain remains required (its tests cannot run without it); a failed or impossible legacy compile no longer stops the run — the equivalence strategy switches to recorded traces / golden-master fixtures, and that downgrade is stated in the plan and in TRANSFORMATION_NOTES.md so reviewers know the strength of the proof - preflight: a red legacy toolchain now yields Ready-with-gaps for transform/reimagine instead of Not-ready
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| description | argument-hint |
|---|---|
| Environment readiness check — analysis tools, build toolchain, source completeness, telemetry access | <system-dir> [target-stack] |
Check whether this environment is ready to analyze — and eventually
transform — legacy/$1, and tell the user exactly what to fix before the
other commands run into it. Modernization sessions fail late and
confusingly when this isn't done: assessment metrics silently degrade
without analysis tools, characterization tests can't run without a build
toolchain, and dependency maps come out wrong when half the source isn't
in the tree.
Run every check even when an early one fails — the point is one complete readiness report, not the first error.
Check 1 — Detect the stack
Fingerprint legacy/$1 from file extensions and manifests: languages,
build system, deployment/config descriptors. This drives which checks
below apply. Report what was detected and the rough file split.
Check 2 — Analysis tooling
For each, check availability (command -v) and report version, what it's
used for, and what degrades without it:
| Tool | Used by | Without it |
|---|---|---|
scc (or cloc) |
assess | LOC/complexity fall back to find+wc; COCOMO estimate gets coarser |
lizard |
assess --portfolio | complexity estimated from decision-keyword counts |
glow |
all | markdown artifacts render as plain text |
delta |
transform | side-by-side diffs fall back to diff -y |
Include the platform's install one-liner for anything missing
(brew install scc, apt install cloc, pip install lizard, …).
Check 3 — Build toolchain (smoke test, not just presence)
Identify the compiler/interpreter for the detected legacy stack — e.g.
GnuCOBOL (cobc) for COBOL, JDK + Maven/Gradle for Java, cc/make for
C, dotnet for .NET. Then prove it works on this codebase: pick one
representative source file and run a syntax-only compile
(cobc -fsyntax-only, javac, gcc -fsyntax-only, …).
A failed smoke test is the most valuable output of this command — report
the actual error and diagnose it: missing copybook/include path, missing
dialect flag (-std=ibm etc.), fixed vs free format, missing dependency
jar. These are the errors that otherwise surface mid-/modernize-transform
with much less context.
If the user passed a [target-stack], do the same for it: runtime,
package manager, test framework (mvn -v, npm -v, pytest --version, …).
Check 4 — Source completeness
The dependency map is only as good as what's in the tree. Check for the detected stack's equivalents of:
- Referenced-but-missing includes — copybooks (
COPY Xwith noX.cpy), headers, imports that resolve nowhere. Count and list the top missing names. - Deployment/config descriptors — JCL for batch COBOL, CICS CSD
definitions,
web.xml/route configs, cron/scheduler definitions. Without these, entry-point detection and the code↔storage join in/modernize-mapare guesswork. - Data definitions — DDL, schemas, copybook record layouts, ORM mappings.
- Binary-only artifacts — load modules, jars, DLLs with no matching source. These become unmappable black boxes; flag them now.
Check 5 — Optional context
- Production telemetry — is an observability/APM MCP server connected,
or are batch job logs / runtime exports available? (Enables the runtime
overlay in
/modernize-assessStep 4 and timing annotations in/modernize-map.) - Version control history — is
legacy/$1under git with meaningful history? (Change-frequency data sharpens risk ranking.)
Report
Write analysis/$1/PREFLIGHT.md: a status table — one row per check,
status ✅ / ⚠️ / ❌, what was found, and the fix for anything not green —
followed by a Ready / Ready-with-gaps / Not ready verdict per command:
assess+map+extract-rules— need Checks 1–2 green-ish and Check 4's missing-include count lowbrief— needs only the three discovery artifacts; no toolingtransform+reimagine— additionally need Check 3 green for the target stack. A red legacy toolchain downgrades these to Ready-with-gaps, not Not-ready: equivalence testing falls back to recorded traces / golden-master fixtures instead of dual execution (common and expected for CICS/IMS code that has no local runtime)harden— needs Check 2 plus any stack-specific SAST tooling found
Print the table in the session too, and end with the single most important fix if anything is red.