Bringing the ten Diagnostic Surface Categories to parity with the Vital Signs — a homeowner-applied checklist, operator-defined taxonomy, standalone record type.
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Vital Signs (VS-01 through VS-10) are functionally complete — each association's structural baseline now has its own diagnostic schema, homeowner form, and perspective views, with sequential navigation between them.
The next development phase brings the Diagnostic Surface Categories (DSC-01 through DSC-10) — Assessments, Board Elections, Books and Records, Board Authority, Association Operations, Management Company, Covenant Enforcement, Attorney's Fees, Maintenance, and Foreclosure — to that same level of completeness.
Categories work differently than Vital Signs. Vital Signs are filled in once per association, establishing its structural baseline. Categories are a checklist a homeowner applies to their own situation — selecting every category where they're experiencing a dispute. A single case may touch several categories at once, such as an assessment dispute that escalates into a books-and-records request.
As with Vital Signs, the underlying taxonomy — the categories themselves, their legal references, and their dependencies on the Vital Signs — is defined and maintained by the project, not by individual homeowners. Homeowners select from the list; they don't create new categories or fields.
DSC records will be a standalone record type, each one cross-referencing the relevant association's Vital Signs profile rather than being embedded within it. This reflects that many DSC cases can exist per association over time, submitted by different homeowners.
Together, the ten Vital Signs and the ten Categories are designed to be comprehensive enough to place any HOA governance case — Vital Signs answer what kind of association this is, structurally; Categories answer where, specifically, the dispute is occurring.
Next session: turning the existing Categories specification into the same kind of structured, navigable record that Vital Signs already has.
