Introduce the worktree convention the corpus previously lacked: any
substantive work stream targeting main — in every mode, autonomous
(/boss) and interactive alike — runs in a git worktree on its own
branch (issue-N-<slug>), and the branch reaches main only through a
user-ratified merge performed by the orchestrator (fast-forward
preferred, push covered by the ratification, no pull request).
Background sessions were already harness-isolated; this extends the
same isolation to the sessions the harness does not guard. The
convention depends on worktree.baseRef=head (the default 'fresh'
bases branches on origin's routinely-stale tip under the
no-autonomous-push discipline), now pinned in conventions.md.
boss/SKILL.md gains the run-level mechanics (§ The run worktree):
one worktree per run named after the reference issue, entered before
the first dispatch; the merge is a user-reserved run-close act; the
done-state notify names the branch as the review handle; closes #N
fires at merge-and-push time. Iron Law, rollback-sandbox framing,
user-reserved-act enumerations, rationalisations, and red flags
updated to match.
Corollary reconciliations after adversarial review: implement's
'there is no branch' narrowed to 'the loop creates no branch of its
own'; specify's auto-signed-commits-on-main heading reworded to
ratified-history framing; the sandbox bullets in conventions.md and
the CLAUDE.md fragment note the anchor is the run branch's base.
The skills meta-repo itself stays exempt (its CLAUDE.md: install
symlinks resolve to the primary clone) and direct-on-main.
During a multi-task run nothing commits between tasks, so one task's
file-level `git checkout -- <file>` / `git restore <file>` silently
destroys an earlier task's uncommitted DONE work in a shared file. The
loss was structurally invisible: spec- and quality-reviewers are scoped
to the current task's footprint, diff_fingerprint only detects
same-task repair cycles, and the end-of-iteration tree gate counts
files (the surviving changes keep it nonzero). Observed in the wild as
a PARTIAL run whose DONE reports did not match the tree. Two layers,
both plugin-side (harness-level prevention is ruled out — decision log
on the issue):
Prose guard — implementer.md Step 8 no longer sanctions file checkout
for scope curation: over-reach is undone by editing back, a broken
intermediate state is repaired forward or reported BLOCKED (new fourth
BLOCKED bucket in the status protocol). A matching Iron Law line in
implement/SKILL.md covers all in-loop agents, whole-file and --patch;
docs/conventions.md now marks the checkout discard idiom as the
orchestrator's, between iterations.
Mechanical guard — after every task of a multi-task run a snapshot
agent records `git stash create` (a dangling commit; HEAD, index, and
tree untouched — semantics verified empirically in a scratch repo) plus
the `git diff HEAD --name-only --no-renames` path set. A path that was
HEAD-modified at one boundary and gone at the next trips a hard
BLOCKED naming the lost paths, the boundary, and the recovery snapshot
sha (`git show <sha>:<path>`); the discard verdict outranks per-task
outcomes in blocked_detail since the reports and the tree have
diverged. Coarse by design, in both directions, and documented as
such: a checkout-then-re-edit or a --patch hunk restore escapes the
comparison (the snapshot keeps it diagnosable); a legitimate
back-to-HEAD edit trips it (the verdict says adjudicate against the
snapshot). --no-renames keeps a staged rename from reading as a loss;
untracked files are outside the threat model (checkout cannot discard
them). Cost: one sonnet/medium call per task, multi-task runs only;
single-task and mini runs are unchanged.
Verified: node --check on the async-wrapped script and a stub-agent
harness — discard trips the hard BLOCKED and stops the loop; an
accumulating happy path, a plan-intended deletion, a single-task run,
and a dead snapshot agent all pass without a false positive.
closes#23
Replace the global ~/.config/git/ignore mechanism with a committed,
per-project docs/.gitignore whose entries `specs/` and `plans/` are
relative to docs/. The ignore now travels with each repo instead of
living in the user's global excludes.
specify (Step 3) and planner (intro) create docs/.gitignore on demand
if a project has not set it up yet, so a spec/plan can never become
committable. conventions.md § File layout is the single source; the
onboarding fragment tells a new project to set it up.
The global ~/.config/git/ignore block is removed separately (it is
outside this repo).
An adversarial review of 08bc2aa found three gaps:
- templates/CLAUDE.md.fragment still described the OLD git-tracked /
git-rm-at-close model verbatim — the worst place to miss it, since new
projects import this fragment into their CLAUDE.md. Rewritten to the
gitignored / shell-rm / ledger-only model.
- INSTALL.md still cited "4-digit naming" — now slug-only.
- The fieldtest cross-cycle deletion rule was self-defeating: it keyed
the spare/delete decision on the permanent fieldtest- prefix, which
cannot encode "spare once, then delete." Because fieldtest runs only
AFTER audit closes, the fresh fieldtest spec never exists at the
cycle-close sweep, so the rule is simply "audit discards every
working-tree spec/plan"; the spent fieldtest spec present at N+1's
close was already consumed and goes with the rest. The prefix is now
only a working-tree label, not a delete discriminator. Reconciled
across audit, conventions, pipeline, fieldtest, fieldtester.
Per-cycle specs and plans stop being git-tracked commit-then-git-rm
artefacts and become git-ignored working files: created on disk for the
active cycle, read across sessions from the working tree, and shell-rm'd
at cycle close by audit. Nothing is committed, so there is no
git-history copy — the durable record of a cycle's intent is the design
ledger only, and no durable artefact (code, test, doc, ledger) may cite
a spec/plan by number or path.
- conventions/pipeline/design/README: invert the git-tracked -> git-rm
-> git-history-recovery model to gitignored -> shell-rm -> ledger-only.
- naming: drop the NNNN file counter; files are slug.md (fieldtest specs
keep a fieldtest- prefix as the cycle-close discriminator).
- cycle number: separated from the (now-gone) file number, sourced from
the feat(NNNN)/audit(NNNN) commit subjects, which cycle commits carry.
- specify/planner/fieldtest/fieldtester: no commit step; fieldtest splits
fixtures (committed as code) from its spec (gitignored), with the
cross-cycle rule that a fieldtest- spec belongs to the next cycle.
- boss: auto-sign auditability moves from the (boss-signed) commit
subject to the run's reference issue; rollback reverts only code.
- audit: new Step 5 shell-rm's the cycle spec+plan after the architect
reads them, sparing fieldtest- specs.
Companion machine config (outside this repo): the global git excludes
(~/.config/git/ignore) gains docs/specs/ and docs/plans/ so the ignore
applies to every project at once.
Under /boss only, when the orchestrator hits a durable deficiency in the
plugin itself (a skill, agent, convention, or pipeline/cascade gap)
mid-run, it files an issue against the plugin's own tracker and continues,
marking provenance with a body block — no new label, so the fixed work-type
vocabulary stays intact.
Adds the trigger and its evidence gate (a citable path:line inside the
plugin), dedupe-as-gate over open and recently-closed issues, and the
discipline that filing is neither a notify event nor a substitute for a due
bounce-back. Wires the new section into issue/SKILL.md (boss joins the
issue-filing callers) and docs/conventions.md (Issue-tracker pointer).
closes#9
Retire the obligatory five-lens spec-skeptic auto-sign panel (worst case
18 agent runs per spec under /boss). The autonomous signature is now the
Step-5 grounding-check PASS alone — an independent fresh-context agent's
verdict against currently-green tests; a no-override BLOCK/INFRA_ERROR
routes to the human sign-off pause.
The judgement the panel applied moves upstream into specify Step 1.5,
whose stance inverts: a load-bearing fork the orchestrator can DERIVE an
answer for (sources, code, consistency, risk) is decided boldly and
recorded on the run's reference issue; only a pure-preference fork
bounces. spec-skeptic survives as an optional ad-hoc bias-breaker the
orchestrator pulls when unsure whether its leaning is judgement or bias —
not a gate, not a veto.
Every /boss run carries a mandatory reference issue (created if the cycle
had none): the fork-decision log, the orchestrator's cross-run memory,
and the only surviving trace of a hard-dropped attempt.
Relax main-sacrosanct below the session anchor: within an autonomous run
the orchestrator may git reset --hard its OWN UNPUSHED commits above the
anchor on a dead end — never below the anchor, never a pushed commit
(forward-only/revert). Discarded attempts are hard-dropped, no parking.
Verified across the 9 edited files by a 4-lens adversarial review
(retired-panel residue, cross-file contracts, rollback-boundary safety,
stance coherence): unanimous SOUND. Baseline tagged pre-autosign-rework.
closes#8
docs/specs and docs/plans hold only the active cycle's artefacts: a spec/plan is committed while its cycle is live and git-rm'd in the cycle-close commit (after audit drift-clean), so HEAD shows only in-flight work while git history keeps the full text. No issue-posting, no gitignore branch — git history + the design ledger are the durable record.
Rewrites conventions.md § Lifecycle as the single source of truth; pipeline.md, design.md, README.md, specify, planner, glossary, brainstorm, issue, and the CLAUDE.md fragment follow it. Naming stays NNNN-slug.md (a within-cycle handle; recycling on an emptied directory is fine).
The auto-sign panel earned its keep: in aura it signed ~20 specs autonomously and discriminates (several recent specs escalated to the human path). The needless complexity was the configuration freedom around it — spec_auto_sign was a per-project toggle that was only ever meant to be on.
Remove the toggle. Auto-sign is now fixed /boss behaviour, with the human sign-off pause as the escalation target (objective gate red / design BLOCK / INFRA_ERROR / budget spent). The panel itself, the Step-1.5 seeding machinery, grounding-check, and the spec-skeptic agent are unchanged; conventions.md can now state there is no per-project behavioural toggle at all.
The fence-label -> parser fact, the specify/grounding-check/planner
parse gates, the parse-trace attestation, and all their cross-references
served a single real user (ailang). Convention over configuration: the
generic machinery is removed plugin-wide; the one consumer carries an
equivalent project-local directive in its own CLAUDE.md.
Archive under docs/plans and docs/specs left intact as time documents.
The profile was never parsed — it was prose the skill bodies told the model to read, so most slots were dead, constant across every project, or fiction (the whole pipeline block, including the "tdd is opt-in" claim, was enforced by nothing).
Split it in two: constants become fixed conventions named directly by the skills (new docs/conventions.md), and the few genuinely per-project facts move to each project's CLAUDE.md under '## Skills plugin: project facts'. tdd/fieldtest/docwriter are now always available; the only behavioural toggle left is spec auto-sign.
Delete docs/profile-schema.md and templates/project-profile.yml; add docs/conventions.md and a project-facts section to templates/CLAUDE.md.fragment; rewrite all SKILL/agent prose and the pipeline/design/migration/README/INSTALL docs accordingly.
claude
Brummel