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Skills/docs/design.md
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Brummel eb74f99bd4 feat(boss): bolder autonomous /boss — grounding-PASS auto-sign, rollback sandbox, reference issue
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
2026-06-19 00:06:44 +02:00

153 lines
7.2 KiB
Markdown

# Design
## Why split plugin from project
The skills system originally evolved inside the AILang project,
where it grew organically against AILang's specific paths,
build commands, vocabulary, and contracts. Lifting it into a
plugin requires a clean separation between what is universal
(belongs in the plugin) and what is project-specific (belongs
in the project's `CLAUDE.md`).
The litmus test: would a sentence in a SKILL or agent body
still make sense in a Python web project, a Rust CLI, and a
TypeScript library? If yes, plugin. If it mentions `cargo`,
`crates/`, `docs/design/INDEX.md`, `Form A`, or any project-specific
identifier, it goes to the project's `CLAUDE.md` — either as a
project fact (the few mechanical facts the skills consume) or as
sittenkodex (domain contracts, anti-patterns).
There is no separate profile file. An earlier design had a
per-project `dev-cycle-profile.yml`, but it was never parsed — it
was prose the skill bodies told the model to read, and almost every
slot was constant across projects, dead, or derivable. So the
constant parts became fixed conventions (`conventions.md`) and the
genuinely-varying parts moved into each project's `CLAUDE.md`.
## Plugin layer (universal)
The plugin owns:
- **Pipeline form** — the directed graph of phases:
`design → plan → execute → review → close`, entered through a
**selector cascade** of entry paths walked on a verification /
enumeration axis (observed bug → `debug`; design fork →
`brainstorm`; behaviour-preserving type/signature edit →
`compiler-driven`; test-specifiable → `tdd`; else → spec-driven).
The taxonomy of paths and their oracles lives in
`pipeline.md` § The methodology taxonomy.
- **Hard-gates** — spec before plan, plan before implement,
audit before cycle-close. Skipping rules are codified per
skill.
- **Agent template** — every agent file follows the same
structure: frontmatter (name, description, tools), Iron Law,
standing reading list, numbered process, status protocol,
output format, common rationalisations, red flags.
- **TDD as an independent inner-loop discipline** — the
implementer agent carries TDD even when the plan task forgot
to script a RED-first step.
- **RED-first bug fixes** — non-negotiable for any observable
misbehaviour; the debug skill is the gate.
- **Status protocol** — `DONE / DONE_WITH_CONCERNS / PARTIAL /
BLOCKED / NEEDS_CONTEXT`, plus reviewer-specific terminal
states.
- **Working-tree-as-quarantine** — agents write artefacts to
the working tree, never commit. Only the orchestrator commits.
- **main HEAD sacrosanct below the session anchor** — no reset, no
revert of user-ratified history, by any actor; main moves forward only
via orchestrator commits. The one narrow exception is the `/boss`
rollback sandbox: the orchestrator may wind back its *own* unpushed
autonomous commits above the run's start anchor (`boss/SKILL.md`
§ Direction freedom).
- **No nested subagent dispatch** — a hard Claude Code platform
constraint: an agent cannot spawn further agents. Workflows do not
lift it; a workflow script orchestrates from the **top level**, and
the agents it spawns still cannot spawn further agents. This is
exactly why the autonomous execution loops moved onto the Workflow
substrate: the `implement-loop` and `compiler-driven-edit` scripts
(`implement/workflows/`) run the per-phase agents as their own
top-level `agent()` calls, so a single phase is independently
invokable — which retired the former `implement-orchestrator`
agent's inline-role-switch workaround (it had to absorb the three
phases into one context precisely because it could not nest). The
four phase agents survive as the agent-types the scripts dispatch;
what was retired is the dispatch/aggregation prose. The interactive
paths (`specify`, `brainstorm`) stay prose skills — their oracle is
human intent and needs a human in the loop, which a
run-to-completion workflow cannot host.
- **No orphan agents** — every agent lives under the skill
that dispatches it.
- **Output budget discipline** — agents have word budgets on
their reports.
## Fixed conventions (universal)
The constants that used to be configurable but were the same in
every project are now plugin conventions, named directly in skill
and agent bodies and documented once in `conventions.md`:
spec dir `docs/specs`, plan dir `docs/plans`, 4-digit per-directory
naming, the vocabulary cycle / iteration / milestone / contract,
standing reading (`CLAUDE.md` + `git log -10`), git discipline
(only-orchestrator commits, main sacrosanct), Gitea + `closes #N`,
and the whole pipeline graph (see `pipeline.md`).
Specs and plans are ephemeral active-cycle artefacts — the two
directories stay git-tracked and hold only what is in flight; at cycle
close each is `git rm`'d from the repo, kept only in git history, never
as a durable file (see `conventions.md` § Lifecycle).
## Project facts (project-specific)
The handful of facts that genuinely vary per project live in the
project's `CLAUDE.md` under `## Skills plugin: project facts`:
code roots, build / test / lint / doc-build commands, regression
scripts, architect sweeps, design-ledger / glossary / contracts /
models / bench / public-interface / fieldtest-examples paths,
by-role standing reading, and the issue-tracker repo slug and commands.
The template is in
`../templates/CLAUDE.md.fragment`; the per-fact reference is the
table in `conventions.md`.
## Resolution model
The plugin uses **convention-and-fact prompts**, not template
rendering and not a config parser. Each SKILL.md and agent file is
generic prose that either names a fixed convention directly or
points at a project fact:
> Write the spec to `docs/specs`. Use the project's build command
> (its CLAUDE.md project facts).
The project's `CLAUDE.md` is always in context (it is standing
reading #1), so the model resolves the facts at read-time. This
avoids a build step and keeps a single source of truth in the repo.
## Sittenkodex split
The plugin does **not** carry project-specific anti-patterns,
feature-acceptance gates, or domain contracts. Those belong in
the project's own `CLAUDE.md`. The plugin only carries the
*universal* discipline constants (only-orchestrator commits,
main sacrosanct, no orphan agents, agents-don't-call-agents)
which are conditions for the plugin's own correctness.
The relationship:
- **Plugin** (this repo): mechanics, universal discipline, fixed
conventions
- **Project CLAUDE.md**: project facts — the few mechanical facts
the skills consume (code roots, build/test, tracker slug, …) —
plus sittenkodex (domain-specific anti-patterns and acceptance
criteria)
## What's out of scope for this plugin
- **Issue-tracker integration**: the plugin reads the project's
issue-tracker commands (the repo slug, list command, and
single-issue-with-comments command, all in its CLAUDE.md project
facts) and invokes them, and `specify` may post a reconciliation
comment or create a seeding issue via the tracker's comment / create
commands — but the plugin does not directly call Gitea / GitHub /
Linear APIs. Every read and write goes through the configured shell
command, so the plugin remains transport-agnostic.