/ax-audit

Blank-canvas surface with no agent-generated starting content

User opens a new document, email, or report: empty canvas, blinking cursor, agent available but silent. A half-written draft is easier to shape than an empty page, but the agent doesn't offer one.

What goes wrong

User clicks "New marketing email" in a tool that has their brand voice and audience data. Blank editor, agent idle. A contextual draft would have them editing in ten seconds.

Detection

Surfaces: agent-chat

Auditability: observational

Judgment signals:

• Find creation surfaces (new/create routes, empty editors, blank composition areas).
• Check whether agent-generated content or templates are offered on first load.
• Flag blank-canvas surfaces with no generative starting point where the agent has enough context.

Concrete commands:

rg '(/new|/create|/compose|/draft)' --type=ts -l src/
rg '(EmptyState|BlankCanvas|emptyDocument|initialContent:\s*["'"'"']{2})' --type=ts -l src/
rg '(generateDraft|suggestDraft|aiDraft|startWithAI|TemplatePicker)' --type=ts -l src/

False-positive guards:

• Skip files with // ax-audit-ignore:comm-no-generative-momentum.
• Skip test/Storybook fixtures and code editors where blank is the expected state.

Fix

Offer an agent-generated draft on blank-canvas surfaces: "Start with AI draft" button, template suggestions, or outline. Always let the user dismiss and start from scratch.

Default tier and overrides

Defaults to: backlog

Examples

Anti-pattern (fails):

export function NewReport() {
  // Agent has project data, metrics, goals: offers nothing
  return <RichTextEditor initialContent="" />;
}

Applied (passes):

export function NewReport() {
  const project = useProject();
  const { suggestion, dismiss } = useAgentSuggestion({
    prompt: `Draft a report outline for ${project.name}`,
  });
  return (
    <div>
      {suggestion && (
        <Banner onAccept={() => editor.setContent(suggestion)} onDismiss={dismiss}>
          Start with AI outline?
        </Banner>)}
      <RichTextEditor ref={editor} />
    </div>
  );
}

Suppression

{/* ax-audit-ignore:comm-no-generative-momentum, code editor, blank canvas is intentional */}
<CodeEditor />