docs: Documentation audit — outdated, incorrect, and missing content

[vredchenko]

Summary

A comprehensive audit of docs/ compared against the current state of the codebase (primarily smartem-decisions, smartem-frontend, smartem-devtools). The docs are structurally sound with good organisation and useful ADRs, but they largely reflect the state of the codebase from mid-to-late 2025. Significant additions since then are undocumented, and several claims are now factually wrong.

Findings are grouped by severity.

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Incorrect (will mislead readers)

These will cause confusion or errors if followed.

Doc	Claim	Reality
backend/api-server.md	python -m smartem_backend.simulate_msg and ./tools/simulate-messages.sh exist	Neither exists. The tool is tools/external_message_simulator.py
backend/api-server.md	./scripts/k8s/dev-k8s.sh up (implies it's in smartem-decisions)	Script lives in smartem-devtools scripts/k8s/, not in smartem-decisions
backend/database.md	Lists 3 migrations (baseline, indexes, prediction models)	There are 7 migrations — missing: quality metrics, schema drift fixes, suggested acquisition index, agent log table
backend/database.md	Baseline migration ID 6e6302f1ccb6	Actual baseline file is 2025_09_18_1042-001_create_core_smartem_schema_baseline.py — ID likely differs
operations/kubernetes.md	./scripts/k8s/dev-k8s.sh (implies in smartem-decisions)	Lives in smartem-devtools scripts/k8s/
development/generate-docs.md	tox -e docs to generate documentation	No tox.ini exists in smartem-decisions. Docs generation has moved elsewhere
development/e2e-simulation.md	./tests/e2e/run-e2e-test.sh (implies in smartem-decisions)	Lives in smartem-devtools tests/e2e/
glossary.md	ARIA = "Automated Real-time Image Analysis"	ARIA is a central metadata repository for structural biology data from multiple facilities (INSTRUCT-ERIC) — not real-time image analysis

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Severely Incomplete (missing major functionality)

These documents exist but cover only a fraction of current functionality.

Doc	What's documented	What actually exists
backend/api-documentation.md	~8 API endpoints	Reality has 60+ endpoints including atlas tiles, quality predictions, agent sessions/logs, debug endpoints, frontend SSE stream, ordered foilholes, latent representations
backend/database.md	Implies ~5 core tables	Reality has 22 tables including quality prediction models/weights/parameters, quality metrics/statistics, agent log/connection/session/instruction/acknowledgement, atlas tiles, overall quality predictions
agent/cli-reference.md	Documents parse/validate/watch	Missing the installed smartem-agent CLI entry point (via pyproject.toml [project.scripts]), and 5 other CLI entry points (smartem.agent-cleanup, smartem.register-prediction-model, smartem.init-model-weight, smartem.random-model-predictions, smartem.random-prior-updates)
operations/environment-variables.md	Lists DB and RabbitMQ vars	Missing CORS_ALLOWED_ORIGINS, SMARTEM_BACKEND_CONFIG, and appconfig.yml YAML-based configuration (database pool settings, particle_select_batch_size, etc.)
development/tools.md	Lists 4 tools	Missing db_table_totals.py, check_schema_drift.py, generate_api_docs.py, makeiso.sh

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Stale / Outdated (not wrong per se, but no longer reflects current state)

Doc	Issue
smartem-decisions README.md	Still calls itself "proof of concept" — the system is production-grade with 60+ endpoints, 22 DB tables, CI/CD, K8s deployment, ML pipeline
backend/api-server.md	Only covers basic API/consumer startup. Doesn't mention appconfig.yml, frontend_stream.py (frontend SSE), agent log submission, or the ML prediction pipeline
operations/containerization.md	Documents multi-stage developer/build/runtime stages — this matches Dockerfile.dev, but the production Dockerfile is simpler (installs from PyPI). Docs don't distinguish between the two
operations/containerization.md	Image name ghcr.io/diamondlightsource/smartem-decisions — CI actually uses ghcr.io/${{ github.repository }} (case-sensitive)

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Entirely Missing Documentation

No docs exist for these areas:

• ML prediction pipeline — quality prediction models, model weights, training tables, metrics aggregation
• Frontend SSE stream — GET /frontend/events/stream for real-time UI updates
• Agent logging — POST /agent/{agent_id}/session/{session_id}/logs and the agentlog table (added March 2026)
• Debug endpoints — agent session management, test instruction creation
• Image serving — atlas and gridsquare image endpoints (GET /grids/{grid_uuid}/atlas_image, GET /gridsquares/{gridsquare_uuid}/gridsquare_image)
• appconfig.yml — YAML-based application configuration (DB pool tuning, batch sizes, log file path)
• smartem-frontend — no documentation at all. Frontend is now a monorepo with npm workspaces (apps/legacy, apps/smartem, packages/api, packages/ui), React 19, MUI 7, TanStack Router, Tailwind CSS 4, Orval API client generation
• smartem-devtools webui — the developer dashboard (React 19, Vite, MDX) has no documentation

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Suggested Priority

1. Fix incorrect claims (wrong script paths, phantom modules, wrong ARIA definition) — these actively mislead
2. Update database.md — migration list and table inventory are significantly behind
3. Update API documentation — endpoint coverage is ~13% of reality
4. Add frontend docs — entire subsystem undocumented
5. Fill in missing topics (ML pipeline, appconfig, image serving, agent logging)
6. Refresh stale content (README "proof of concept", containerization docs)