Diagnostics

How to get here: Click the Stethoscope icon in the sidebar.

Diagnostics is where you go to find and fix problems. The page opens as a scrollable card-based hub with a responsive layout. Three breakpoints: small (under 700px, single column), medium (700-1100px, two columns), and large (over 1100px, three columns). All cards have 16px border-radius. Click a card to drill into its detail view; click the back button in the header to return to the hub.

If no scan has been run yet, an empty state appears with a "Scan Now" button.

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Hub Layout

Hero Banner

Art-backed header at the top of the page, height scales by breakpoint (100/130/160px). Shows "Diagnostics" title and "Health, conflicts, and mod safety" subtitle on the left. When a health score exists, the score appears as a large bold number on the right, colored green (80+), yellow (50-79), or red (below 50).

Alerts Row

Appears below the hero when relevant. Shows Patch Day warnings, malware threat alerts, and "mods to check" notifications.

Row 1: Conflicts & Broken Files

Two cards side by side (stacked on small). Conflicts card takes 2/3 width, Broken Files takes 1/3.

Conflicts & Duplicates card — Has a 3px left border: yellow (warning) when issues exist, green (plumbob) when clean. Contains:

• 56px animated ring gauge — fills proportional to total count (capped at 300 for visual scaling), colored yellow or green. Count shown centered inside the ring in bold.
• "Conflicts & Duplicates" title with summary text (e.g. "24 conflicts · 8 duplicates · 3 identical" or "No issues found")
• "View all" link in accent color
• Preview list of up to 5 conflict groups, each showing a colored severity dot (red = high, yellow = medium, muted = low), the two filenames ("file1.package vs file2.package"), and shared instance count

Hover lifts with shadow. Clicking navigates to the full conflicts detail view.

Broken Files card — Has a 3px left border: red (danger) when broken files exist, muted border when clean. Contains:

• Warning triangle icon + "BROKEN FILES" header in uppercase
• Large 4xl bold count in danger red (or muted when zero)
• Status text: "files need attention" (when broken) or "all clear" (when clean)
• Animated dot indicators when broken: up to 12 small red-tinted squares appear with staggered animation. If more than 12, shows "+N" overflow text.
• Pulsing red dot next to the header when broken files exist (scales 1x to 1.4x on a 2-second loop)
• "View" link in accent color (only when broken)

Clicking navigates to My CC filtered to broken files.

Row 2: Save Health, Quarantine, Scan Summary

Two to three cards depending on breakpoint.

Save Health card — Shield icon, "SAVE HEALTH" header with Decrypt tier badge. Save discovery (finding .save files) is Free; clicking a save to analyze, running batch analysis, or running a corruption check requires Decrypt. Shows:

• Health score as large 3xl bold number, colored by status (green/yellow/red)
• Status label: "Healthy", "Needs cleanup", or "Needs attention"
• Animated health bar (2.5px tall, rounded) filling to score percentage
• Issue breakdown rows: Conflicts (yellow dot), Broken (red dot), Duplicates (blue/accent dot) — each with count

Quarantine card — When empty: compact single row showing "No quarantined files" with a shield icon. When items exist: expands to show count with animated warning indicators.

Scan Summary card (at large breakpoint appears in this row; at smaller breakpoints, appears in its own row below) — Shows data from the most recent scan including file type distribution bars and a "Scan again" button.

Row 3: Companion Promo + Art

Two cards side by side. A companion mod promo card ("Game Link — Monitor your game live") and an art banner with warm Sims house scene.

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Conflicts & Duplicates

Conflicts, soft conflicts, duplicates, and identical files are consolidated into one card. The card shows the combined count. Click to open the detail view with internal filter chips for each sub-type.

Resource Conflicts

A conflict happens when two or more files modify the same game resource. The game can only load one version, so it picks one and ignores the other. Which one it picks is non-deterministic and can change between launches. That means a conflict might work fine today and cause issues tomorrow.

Conflict Types

SimSweep classifies each conflict group by type with color-coded badges:

Conflict Severity

Not all conflicts are equally bad. SimSweep uses a tiered system:

Tier 1 (Behavioral): Interactions, buffs, traits, snippets, situations, careers, object states, spells. These are the most impactful because they change how the game works.

Tier 2 (Gameplay): Moods, recipes, statistics, rewards, aspirations, relationship bits, venues, zone modifiers, drama nodes, bucks perks. Still meaningful but less likely to cause crashes. Conflicts that only involve Tier 2 types get auto-downgraded severity.

Override vs Conflict

When both mods override the same base game resource (not each other), that's different from a mod-vs-mod conflict. Override conflicts are "pick one" situations, meaning the game will use one mod's version and ignore the other, but nothing is actually broken. These get reduced severity since they're intentional design choices, not bugs.

Soft Conflicts

Soft conflicts are tuning-level incompatibilities that resource-key conflicts miss. Two trait mods that block each other, two buffs competing for the same slot, lot traits that are mutually exclusive — these are "soft" conflicts where both mods work individually but silently interfere when installed together. No other Sims 4 tool detects these.

6 conflict mechanisms detected:

• Conflicting Traits — Mods define traits that declare each other in conflicting_traits. When your sim gets one, the other is automatically removed.
• Buff Priority — Mods define buffs with the same exclusive_index. The higher-priority buff silently replaces the other.
• Conflicting Perks — Mods define perks in conflicting_perks that can't coexist. Buying one prevents the other.
• Conflicting Lot Traits — Zone modifiers that declare mutual exclusion via conflicting_zone_modifiers. Only one can be active.
• Prohibited Situations — A lot trait from one mod blocks situations from another mod from spawning.
• Relationship Bit Groups — Relationship types sharing group_id exclusivity. Only one can be active between two sims.

Each soft conflict group shows the mechanism type with a color-coded badge, a plain-english explanation of what happens in-game, the files involved, and the specific tuning values that triggered the detection. Click to expand for full detail.

Soft conflict analysis runs as a post-scan pass and adds about 2 seconds to scan time.

Duplicates

Files with identical content (same SHA256 hash) but different filenames or locations. You're wasting disk space and potentially causing load order issues.

The duplicates view shows each group of identical files with sizes and paths. Pick which copy to keep and quarantine the rest.

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Crash Logs

SimSweep reads crash logs and LastException files from your game and tells you what went wrong. This isn't just pattern matching on error messages. It actually analyzes the stack trace.

Framework-Aware Attribution

A lot of Sims 4 mods use community frameworks. When one of these shows up at the bottom of a crash stack, the old behavior was to blame the framework. That's almost never right.

SimSweep walks up the stack trace to find the calling mod. If your mod crashes while calling a framework, the display shows your mod as the suspect with "via [Framework]" underneath, not just the framework name.

When multiple non-framework mods appear in the same crash, it shows "ModA + ModB may be conflicting" instead of picking one arbitrarily.

Severity Levels

Every crash entry gets a severity level based on the error category, confidence, and log type:

Scored Diagnosis

SimSweep uses 40+ weighted patterns with context requirements to diagnose crashes. Instead of first-match-wins (which was unreliable), it uses best-match-wins. A KeyError in tuning code gets a more specific diagnosis than a generic KeyError. Context-aware patterns handle interaction conflicts, situation caps, zone loading issues, and more.

Game Error Codes

The Sims 4 has its own internal error reporting system that uses structured error codes in a {code}:{hash}:{hash} format. SimSweep recognizes these:

• Zone load errors (100-147) - Problems loading lots
• Error 128 - Broken CC detection (DETECT_AND_CLEANUP_INVALID_OBJECTS)
• Service save errors (400-541) - Problems saving game state

Each error code maps to a specific diagnosis with an actionable fix.

Action Labels

Every crash card shows a contextual action label telling you what to do:

• Update mod - The mod needs a newer version
• Install dependency - A required framework or library is missing
• Check packs - The mod requires a DLC pack you might not have
• Run scan - Run a SimSweep scan to find the problem
• Reinstall - The file might be corrupted
• Repair game - The issue is on the game's side

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Broken CC

CC with missing meshes or broken resource references. These are files that won't display correctly in the game because they're pointing to data that doesn't exist.

SimSweep checks both CAS items (missing GEOM meshes) and Build/Buy objects (missing MODL meshes). The validation uses a 3-tier lookup: same file, then all installed mods, then the base game index.

SimSweep distinguishes between:

• Missing mesh (red) - The file has no mesh at all. It won't show up in the game.
• Missing dependency (amber) - The file has its own mesh but references external meshes from other packs or files. You probably need to download a companion pack.

DLC-aware: CC that requires an uninstalled DLC pack is no longer flagged as broken. If a file depends on meshes from a pack you don't own, that's a pack requirement, not broken CC.

Clicking "broken files" anywhere in the app takes you to My CC filtered to show only broken items.

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Malware & Threats

SimSweep scans for malicious or suspicious content in your mods folder:

• Signature matching - Known malware file hashes are checked against a signature database. Exact matches get a pulsing red "MALWARE" badge.
• Behavioral analysis - .ts4script files are analyzed for suspicious patterns (unusual imports, obfuscated code, file system access patterns). Flagged files get a "THREAT" or "Flagged" badge based on severity.
• Safe dismissal - If you're sure a flagged file is safe, you can dismiss the warning. This also reports it as safe to help other users.
• Community verified - Files that multiple users have reported as safe get a "Verified" badge.

Malware scanning runs in parallel during the scan phase, reusing the SHA256 hashes from the indexing phase. The signature database updates automatically.

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Save Health

SimSweep can do a deep analysis of your save files, not just for CC usage tracking but for the overall health of your saves.

Usage Tracking

SimSweep reads all your save files (not just the most recent one) and cross-references every CAS part and placed object against your package index:

• CAS items get the "Used" label when they appear in actual save data
• Objects get matched against what's placed on your lots
• The save filter in My CC lets you filter by individual save file
• Per-save attribution shows which household/save each CC item is used in

Save Health Analysis

Full analysis requires Decrypt tier. Basic scoring is free.

The save health view breaks down each save with:

• Health score based on file size, resource counts, and bloat indicators
• Entity estimates - Approximate household, sim, lot, zone, and relationship counts
• Household browser - Groups sims by last name into collapsible cards with member counts. Sort by sim count or alphabetically.
• Bloat detection:
  • Relationship bloat: warns at 25+ per sim, red flag at 50+
  • Inventory bloat: warns at 100KB+ per sim
  • Save size alerts: warnings at 500MB+, critical at 1GB+
  • Ratio-based warnings when relationships hit 30%, inventory hits 20%, or images hit 40% of save size
• Compression ratio stats
• Packs used - Chips showing which DLC packs are referenced in the save

Save Comparison

Requires Decrypt tier

Compare two saves side-by-side: file size, resource counts, health scores, and per-category breakdowns. Useful for spotting bloat growth or tracking save corruption.

Growth History

Requires Decrypt tier

SimSweep takes snapshots of each save's health after every scan. Over time you can see how file size, sim count, and health score have changed. Max 50 snapshots stored, deduped so unchanged saves don't waste space.

Save Backups

• Manual backups with custom names and descriptions
• Auto-backup on save change (Decrypt) - Watches your saves folder with a 10-second debounce. Keeps up to 3 auto-backups.
• Auto-backup on game launch (Decrypt) - Backs up all saves once when The Sims 4 starts running.
• Desktop notification when saves are auto-backed up
• Export summary - Text report of save health data for sharing or records

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Community Intel

SimSweep's community mod status system lets users report whether mods are working or broken after game updates. This data shows up on file cards and in the file preview.

How it works

There are two ways community data gets collected:

Automatic (Companion Mod): When you play with the Companion Mod, broken CC and tuning conflicts are detected at runtime and reported automatically. SimSweep matches the broken instance IDs to your package files and uploads the reports. Every companion user is a passive data contributor. No manual action needed. A daily cron aggregates these reports into community health scores visible on CC Hub items.

Manual: Users can mark mods as "working" or "broken" from the file preview. Auto-detected "working" reports submit automatically, but "broken" requires manual confirmation (prevents false positives). A mod needs at least 3 distinct reporters before "broken" status displays to other users.

Counter-reports work both ways. If you report a mod as "working" when others say it's broken, that gets submitted too.

Mod Identity Tracking

SimSweep tracks mod versions over time. Each mod gets a normalized identity (slug) that groups all its versions together. This means community reports stick to the right mod even when version numbers change in the filename.