/pulse — Japan Tax Calculator health check #

Audit the whole site and produce a prioritized report. This is a DIAGNOSTIC pass: investigate and propose, then ask before changing anything. Do not commit or deploy without explicit approval (deploys are manual via Coolify).

First, note today's date and work out the current Japanese tax year (FY) and which reforms have since taken effect or expired. Read the current values from the repo, then verify them against official / primary sources (National Tax Agency nta.go.jp, Immigration Services Agency moj.go.jp/isa, Japan Pension Service nenkin.go.jp, MHLW, and Soumu for furusato nozei). Use WebSearch/WebFetch; never flag or "correct" a figure from memory alone. You may fan out research across subagents to go faster.

1. Tax data (js/calculator.js) #

Read the hardcoded values and confirm each is still correct for the current FY:

• Employment income deduction brackets
• Social insurance rates (health, pension, unemployment)
• National Pension monthly amount
• Income tax brackets, basic deduction, and the 2.1% reconstruction surtax
• Resident tax (rate, per-capita amount, basic deduction)
• Blue Return special deduction
• Consumption tax rate and freelance withholding (10.21% / 20.42%, in the invoice guide)
  Flag anything that moved, with the file/line, the current value, the correct value, and the source.

2. Salary data #

• Homepage intro figures (index.njk) and _data/salaries.json vs the latest NTA / MHLW / doda averages. Update only if materially off.
• The salaries page after-tax filter (employeeNet in .eleventy.js) must mirror js/calculator.js. If any calculator rate changes, both must change together.

3. Guides currency #

For every guide in _data/guides.json, check whether the law or dates moved. Pay attention to time-sensitive items, e.g.:

• Invoice System: the 2割特例 transitional measure (expiry) — update once past.
• 2025–2026 visa changes: Business Manager capital rule, the Engineer/Specialist language requirement, the PR "longest period of stay" rule, and visa fee amounts (these were proposals — check if finalized).
• Marriage guide: the joint-custody (共同親権) reform date — fix the tense once it is in force.
• Kakutei shinkoku: the filing window for the upcoming season.
  Flag stale facts with sources. Also confirm each guide's visible "Updated" date and byline are present.

4. Presentation & technical health #

• Run npm run build; it must pass.
• No em dashes ("—") anywhere in source content (style rule). Grep and report any.
• Every guide in _data/guides.json has a live page; all internal links resolve; Article / BreadcrumbList / FAQPage JSON-LD parse as valid JSON.
• robots.txt, llms.txt, sitemap.xml, and the OG image (img/og-image.png) are present and current.
• Spot-check that pages render and the nav/footer/grid include all guides.

5. New ideas from the news #

WebSearch current Japan visa / tax / immigration news and the questions foreigners are actually asking (r/japanlife, r/JapanFinance style; Reddit blocks the crawler, so triangulate from search + fresh competitor guides). Also draft any new _data/news.json entries (date, title, one-to-two-sentence summary, official source URL, and a guide link if one fits) for changes that happened since the last news item, for the user to approve. Then propose 2–3 high-demand topics not yet covered (candidates seen before: inheritance tax for foreigners, crypto tax, NISA / iDeCo investing, the year-end adjustment in depth, health-insurance costs by ward, "how much salary to live in X"). One line of rationale each.

Output #

A prioritized report with three buckets:

• ✅ Up to date — what you confirmed against sources.
• ⚠️ Needs update — file, current vs correct value, source, and suggested fix.
• 💡 New ideas — proposed articles/features with rationale, ranked.

Then ask which fixes to apply and which articles to write. When approved, follow the project conventions: verify against official sources, no em dashes, keep the Lagoon design, add new guides to _data/guides.json (and they auto-appear in the nav dropdown, homepage grid, footer, related links, and llms.txt), give each new guide front-matter date + faqs, and leave the Coolify deploy to the user.