Splunk Admin Doctor

Prerequisites

Tool or access	Purpose	Verify
Bash and Python 3	Run bundled setup and validation helpers	bash --version && python3 --version
Required product/platform access	Inspect or configure the selected target	Complete the documented preflight
Credential files for live modes	Keep secrets out of chat	Verify paths only

Workflow Overview

┌───────────┐   ┌───────────────┐   ┌───────────────┐   ┌─────────────────┐
│ Preflight │ → │ Render/review │ → │ Apply/handoff │ → │ Validate evidence │
└───────────┘   └───────────────┘   └───────────────┘   └─────────────────┘

When to Activate

• The user asks for a Splunk admin doctor, health audit, full feature coverage check, production-safe remediation plan, Cloud/Enterprise admin troubleshooting, or routing to existing Splunk admin skills.
• Preview and review the splunk admin doctor workflow before any live apply phase.
• Diagnose failed prerequisites, generated assets, configuration, or validation evidence.

Scope

Follow the documented read-only or render-first path whenever it is available. This skill does not imply permission to mutate live systems. Require explicit apply flags, protected credentials, and operator review for state changes.

Examples

Inspect the supported setup modes before selecting one:

bash skills/splunk-admin-doctor/scripts/setup.sh --help

Expected output: usage, supported modes, and required arguments are displayed without changing the target environment.

Inspect validation modes before running completion checks:

bash skills/splunk-admin-doctor/scripts/validate.sh --help

Expected output: offline, live, and completion options are displayed when the skill supports them; help exits without mutation.

Troubleshooting

Issue	Cause	Resolution
Preflight fails	A required tool or access path is missing	Resolve it before rendering or applying
Rendered assets are incomplete	Required non-secret inputs are absent	Complete intake and render again
Apply is blocked	Review, credentials, or explicit acceptance is missing	Use the documented handoff
Validation is incomplete	Live evidence is unavailable	Record the gap and keep completion open

This skill diagnoses major Splunk administration domains and renders a conservative fix plan. It supports Splunk Cloud Platform and self-managed Splunk Enterprise, classifying every domain as direct_fix, delegated_fix, manual_support, diagnose_only, or not_applicable.

Coverage and health are deliberately separate:

• remediation_coverage says whether the repository has a safe route for a feature.
• assessment says healthy, finding, partial, unknown, or not_applicable from the supplied evidence.
• evidence_status says whether every applicable rule was actually assessed.
• SAD-EVIDENCE-INCOMPLETE prevents missing evidence from appearing healthy.
• Optional/unlicensed capabilities can be explicitly excluded through boolean applicability.rules or applicability.domains evidence maps; omission alone never implies not applicable. Baseline health domains and rules cannot be excluded through these maps.

The catalog also resolves detected product footprints to exact Security, ITSI, SOAR, Observability, On-Call, AppDynamics, Cisco, AI/ML, MCP, WideField, and Galileo routers. Catalog validation fails when any repository skill lacks an explicit disposition or a delegated handoff no longer exists.

Agent Behavior

Never ask for passwords, tokens, API keys, or other secrets in chat. Do not pass secret values on the command line. Use existing repo credentials files and secret-file paths only. Evidence and generated artifacts reject symlink and hardlink destinations, use bounded reads and writes, and are rendered owner-only.

Platform and target identity fail closed. Supply --platform cloud or --platform enterprise for normal operation. --platform auto is accepted only when the evidence JSON declares platform or a strict HTTPS management hostname ends in .splunkcloud.com; every other ambiguous case fails instead of silently defaulting to Enterprise. If --splunk-uri is supplied, it must be a credential-free HTTPS management origin with a valid hostname and optional numeric port. Userinfo, non-root paths, query strings, and fragments are rejected before collection or rendering.

The doctor is intentionally conservative:

• doctor and fix-plan are read-only with respect to Splunk; they write local report artifacts and remain conservatively mutation-gated by MCP.
• apply requires explicit --fixes FIX_ID[,FIX_ID].
• apply --dry-run previews only.
• --require-complete-evidence exits 3 when any applicable rule remains unassessed; --strict exits 2 for high/critical findings.
• v1 does not run restarts, deletions, certificate rotations, cluster operations, user/role deletion, KV Store cleanup, or backup uploads.
• Specialized work is routed to existing mature skills such as ACS allowlists, HEC, Monitoring Console, Agent Management, Workload Management, SmartStore, PKI, public exposure hardening, license manager, app install, and indexer cluster setup.

Quick Start

Run an Enterprise doctor report:

bash skills/splunk-admin-doctor/scripts/setup.sh \
  --phase doctor \
  --platform enterprise \
  --splunk-home /opt/splunk

Render a fix plan from saved evidence:

bash skills/splunk-admin-doctor/scripts/setup.sh \
  --phase fix-plan \
  --platform enterprise \
  --evidence-file skills/splunk-admin-doctor/fixtures/enterprise_unhealthy.json

Preview selected fix packets:

bash skills/splunk-admin-doctor/scripts/setup.sh \
  --phase apply \
  --platform cloud \
  --evidence-file skills/splunk-admin-doctor/fixtures/cloud_acs_rest_denied.json \
  --fixes SAD-CONNECTIVITY-REST-DENIED \
  --dry-run \
  --json

Preview a live sweep against the canonical named on-prem profile before making any request:

python3 skills/splunk-admin-doctor/scripts/live_validate_all.py \
  --profile onprem_2535 \
  --platform enterprise \
  --max-retained-runs 50 \
  --plan-only

After reviewing the plan, run one bounded validation sweep:

python3 skills/splunk-admin-doctor/scripts/live_validate_all.py \
  --profile onprem_2535 \
  --platform enterprise \
  --max-retained-runs 50 \
  --once

The live runner's --allow-apply mode is currently limited to rendering a local doctor fix plan. Previous remote MC/HEC/WLM and Observability mutation smokes are disabled until target-bound snapshots, cleanup-in-finally behavior, and byte-for-byte rollback are implemented and tested.

Before any live request, the runner requires an existing named profile, an unambiguous Cloud/Enterprise platform resolved from the request or profile, a credential-free HTTPS management origin, and TLS verification. Conflicts fail before REST or SSH probes. Legacy flat credential files are rejected unless the operator explicitly adds --allow-flat-credentials; that compatibility flag must not be used when a named profile can be created. One bounded evidence sweep feeds the doctor and baseline gate; the runner does not repeat the same REST/SSH probes as separate validation steps.

Child-skill validation defaults to checked-in --help interface checks. Add --allow-offline-smoke only to run checked-in offline smoke entrypoints. Source-discovered live phases are rejected until the repository has an audited, checked-in command safety manifest; a source-text match is not proof that a phase is mutation-free. Interface-only success is reported as interface-pass, never as feature validation.

template.example is a non-secret human worksheet, not a CLI spec file. Pass its values through the documented flags and supply machine evidence as JSON with --evidence-file.

Outputs

The default output directory is splunk-admin-doctor-rendered/:

• doctor-report.md and doctor-report.json
• fix-plan.md and fix-plan.json
• coverage-report.json
• artifact-manifest.json with the committed bundle's artifact hashes
• evidence/normalized-evidence.redacted.json
• evidence/collection-notes.md with source provenance and redacted collector notes
• handoffs/*.md for direct and delegated fix packets
• support-tickets/*.md for manual/support packets

The normalized evidence artifact contains the redacted, validated evidence used for rule evaluation, including documented derived fields. It is not a byte-for-byte copy of an operator's source file. A non-blocking output lock serializes the whole bundle, and status verifies the integrity manifest before trusting any report. The obsolete evidence/input-evidence.redacted.json name is removed on the next committed render; consumers must use the normalized filename.

The live validation runner writes bounded, sanitized evidence under splunk-live-validation-runs/:

• checkpoint.json for bounded audit history; it is not an execution cache
• runs/<unique-run-id>/ledger.jsonl with one row per planned or executed step
• runs/<unique-run-id>/evidence/*.redacted.json
• runs/<unique-run-id>/final-report.json and .md

The output namespace is protected by a non-blocking process lock. Run IDs include time, iteration, process ID, and randomness. Checkpoint history is private, bounded, and schema-checked, but every current-run apply render is regenerated; prior step results and artifacts are never reused as current-run success. The runner retains at most 50 recognized run directories in total by default, always preserving the current run; stale or incomplete non-current runs count toward the bound, and the oldest are pruned at safe lifecycle points. Change the positive bound with --max-retained-runs. Command output and REST bodies are bounded, stdin is disabled, and timeout/interrupt handling terminates the whole child process group before finalizing the report.

One-shot and bounded/watch exits reflect the final completed sweep: if its totals contain any hard failures, the runner exits nonzero.

--phase status separates report validity from deployment health. A readable, schema-valid report can still contain findings or incomplete evidence. report_valid is the schema/readability result; deprecated ok is only its alias. healthy, evidence_complete, severity_counts, and health_status carry the assessment. health_status is one of healthy, findings, incomplete, or findings_and_incomplete; never treat report_valid or ok alone as a healthy deployment. strict_ready mirrors the complete-evidence plus high/critical-finding gate used for strict automation, and integrity_verified confirms the committed artifact bundle matched its manifest. Status exits 0 for any valid bundle, including an unhealthy one; automation must gate on the assessment fields rather than the process exit alone.

coverage-report.json includes domain assessments, expected and unassessed evidence paths, product routes, and the exhaustive repository-skill disposition map. A supported feature with missing evidence is unknown, never implicitly healthy.

Read reference.md before changing rule coverage, adding a new fix kind, or expanding apply behavior.