107eb8c1d9
A PR whose diff is entirely under docs/ runs zero tests, so a guard whose INPUT
is shipped prose cannot protect the PR lane of the diffs it exists to check. Its
only firing opportunity is after merge, on the shared branch -- which is how next
went red on dacae9273 while the PR that caused it (#3746) was green on every
check.
The docs-lint job in .github/workflows/docs-required.yml -- an ALREADY-REQUIRED
context -- now selects and runs the docs guards that read the specific docs files
the PR changed.
scripts/docs-guard-registry.cjs test file -> the docs paths it reads (63)
scripts/select-docs-guards.cjs pure (changedPaths, registry) -> test files
scripts/lint-docs-guard-registration.cjs drift guard, wired into lint:ci
scripts/ci-test-scope.cjs is NOT touched -- `git diff origin/next --` on it is
empty -- so #764's saving stands and its 21 pinning tests are untouched.
Selection: exact path; trailing-slash directory prefix (boundary-checked --
docs/adrenaline.md does NOT match docs/adr/, which a naive startsWith gets
wrong); and '*' for the 6 entries that walk docs/ generally or read a computed
path. Unknown maps to '*' -- guessing narrow is how a guard silently stops
running. Measured: a typo fix selects 6 of 63; docs/AGENTS.md selects 12;
docs/COMMANDS.md selects 18.
Four things this got wrong first, each found by an independent reviewer or by
probe, and each having been asserted safe in a comment:
1. The registry started as a RULE in ci-test-scope.cjs's RULES, on the theory
that classify()'s !codeChanged normalization made it inert. True for
docs-ONLY diffs; false for MIXED docs+code diffs, where codeChanged is true
and the normalization never runs:
node scripts/ci-test-scope.cjs --files "docs/a.md src/semver.cts"
with the RULE: 25 targeted_tests
origin/next: 3 targeted_tests
Category error: RULES is the scoped lane's input; a docs-guard registry is a
lane manifest for a consumer that never calls classify(). Extracted; pinned
by value.
2. The second attempt was a dedicated workflow with paths: [docs/**]. Such a
workflow never reports on a non-docs PR, so it can never be a required
context without hanging every non-docs PR -- and a non-required check does not
block a merge, so the guard would have been advisory and #3753 unfixed.
docs-required.yml already has no paths: filter, already supplies the required
docs-lint context, already computes docs_changed, and already ran one docs
guard gated on it. Generalizing that step needs no ruleset edit at all.
3. The registry and the drift lint were built from ONE path-segment heuristic, so
both were blind identically -- and blind at the guard that motivated the issue.
The reader-call regex required a character BEFORE its keyword, so a callee
named exactly read( / load( / parse( / doc( / file( / content( could never
match; and only an INLINE path.join(ROOT,'docs','X.md') argument was caught,
missing the two-step-via-variable form -- the MAJORITY spelling -- plus
template literals and concatenation. Detector 1 fired on 14 of ~450 files, so
35 genuine guards sat unregistered while the lint reported 0 violations,
including cursor-reviewer (reads docs/COMMANDS.md, asserts
.includes('--cursor')) and inventory-headings-countfree. The "accepted blind
spot" this shipped with was the common case, not a fringe.
4. With detection fixed the true population is 115 files: 63 genuine guards, 52
incidental. Running all 63 in a REQUIRED check on a one-line typo fix is the
cost #764 exists to avoid -- install.test.cjs is 7840 lines and reads exactly
one docs file, docs/AGENTS.md, for its frontmatter. Dropping it reproduces the
bug; running it for a typo elsewhere is waste. Hence the map.
Then a second review round found six more, all fixed here:
- fragment-single-edit-propagation.install.test.cjs was EXEMPTED as
"overlay fixture only". False: it reads the real docs/registries/eos.json and
asserts on a registry entry name, and reads the real ADR-0001 and asserts its
H1. A docs-only PR touching either would have gone green and red next -- #3753
shipping again, from inside the fix for it. Now registered against both paths,
and all 52 remaining exemptions were re-audited one by one.
- The SUITES-collision guard compared RAW registry keys, but run-tests.cjs strips
a leading `tests/` BEFORE its suite check. So it caught 'all' and missed
'tests/all' -- the only spelling that can actually occur, since every key
carries the prefix. One typo would have run all 824 test files inside the
required job. Now normalized the same way run-tests.cjs normalizes.
- The lint failed OPEN on an unreadable tests dir or candidate file: 0 violations,
ok:true. A guard that cannot read its input must never report success.
- The exemption ratchet gated identity only, so a baselined file that later
STARTED asserting on shipped docs stayed exempt silently -- 52 permanently blind
files. The baseline now fingerprints the docs paths each exempted file
references and fails when that set changes, naming what changed.
- The exemption marker was still honored inside a multi-line template literal in
the header window. The scanner now tracks template-literal and block-comment
state.
- `git diff --name-only | grep '^docs/'` silently dropped C-quoted non-ASCII docs
paths, making docs_changed=false a green zero-guard check. Both call sites now
pass -c core.quotepath=false.
- The run step was gated on hashFiles(), which a force-committed
.docs-guard-tests.txt would satisfy. The step now rm -f's both scratch files
first and gates on an output it sets itself.
Three empty states, deliberately distinct, because conflating them rebuilds
#3753: an empty or malformed registry HARD-FAILS; docs changed with no guard
covering them logs and skips; no docs change is already gated. The middle state
must never be expressed as an empty --files-from, which prints `no tests in suite
"all"` and exits 0 -- a green check that guarded nothing. With the current
registry that state is unreachable, because the six '*' entries always match;
the branch is kept as defensive handling for a future registry and says so.
timeout-minutes: 15 bounds the required job against a hanging fork-supplied test;
it had none. npm ci was added because the job never installed dependencies -- the
previous single-file step got away without it, the registry does not.
docs/contributing/docs-guard-registration.md documents the rule, following its
sibling cross-platform-portability-rules.md, and CONTRIBUTING.md's CI Test
Quality Checks table links to it. It is also load-bearing: without a docs/ file
in the diff this PR would not have triggered its own lane, shipping an
unexercised change to a required check.
One unrelated fix, included because this PR surfaced it and CLAUDE.md forbids
deferring a defect found while working. On this branch's first CI run,
`full test (windows-latest, 24, shard 3/3)` was CANCELLED at exactly 30 minutes;
tests were still passing 0.8s before the cancel, so it is a wall-clock timeout,
not a hang, and a cancelled job reddens `Required tests`.
The cause is not this PR's test file, which costs ~60ms. Shard composition is
unstable: adding ONE file to the unit suite reshuffled 115 of 268 files between
shards, and shard 3 drew a heavier mix. Underneath that is a real pre-existing
defect. tests/ci-test-job-timeout-budget.test.cjs requires every lane's budget to
be >= 1.5x its MEASURED cost -- "a lane that got slower must be re-budgeted, not
excused" -- and its test-full entry recorded 19m from a windows-22 shard. That is
stale. Measured on `next` with none of this PR's changes present: 26m18s (run
32614439702, windows-latest/24 shard 3/3), 23m36s and 23m17s on shard 2/3. So the
lane costs ~26m and the 30-minute cap carried 1.14x headroom, not 1.5x. The gate
had been out of compliance with its own rule; this PR was merely the file
addition that reshuffled shard 3 past the cliff.
Fixed as that file prescribes: measuredMinutes 19 -> 27 with fresh evidence, and
test-full timeout-minutes 30 -> 45. The rule's minimum for 27m is 41; 45 is
deliberately above it because the reshuffle means per-shard worst case moves run
to run, and a budget pinned to the exact minimum would be re-breached by the next
test file anyone adds. Only that one job's timeout changed; test.yml's scope,
matrix and steps are untouched, so #764's saving is unaffected.
Raising that cap let the Windows shard finish (28m45s, inside 45) and uncovered
a real failure the 30-minute cancel had been masking:
`new quick-task branch branches off origin/main (#2916)` died with
`outcome=timed_out exitCode=null`, SIGTERM, at the 15000ms bound.
tests/quick-branching.test.cjs:149 `runStep` runs a `#!/usr/bin/env bash` script
executing MULTIPLE git commands, but was bound to GIT_TIMEOUT_MS (15000) -- the
norm for a SINGLE git plumbing call. tests/helpers/timeouts.cjs already documents
this exact failure and exists to fix it: HOOK_FANOUT_TIMEOUT_MS was created after
PR #3285 recorded "outcome=timed_out exitCode=null at exactly the 15000ms probe
bound while every other lane passed the same commit", and calls that "a bound
sized for the wrong class, not a slow machine". Our failure is that case
verbatim, so both sites move to the class norm rather than to a bigger number.
The same class also failed on `next` itself 21 hours earlier -- run 32608945654,
windows-latest/24 shard 1/3, `plan touching only src/ in a submodule project
keeps worktree isolation ENABLED` -- where tests/worktree-safety.test.cjs:5845
`runGate` fans out to `git config --file .gitmodules` under a hardcoded 30000.
Fixed too, since it is a defect in the tree regardless of which branch surfaced
it.
A survey of the whole tests/ tree found the same class-mismatch at further
bash fan-out sites bound under 60000ms, and the maintainer approved sweeping
them rather than leaving them latent to surface the same way one at a time. 16
fan-out sites across 16 files now use the class norm.
The sweep is class-correctness, not raising numbers until things pass. Sites
were moved ONLY where the bash body demonstrably spawns something (git, node,
npm, a CLI); self-contained shell snippets were left where they are, and are
listed as deliberately unchanged: pure if/printf bodies (copilot-install), pure
array/case builtins (code-review-pipeline-regression:638), a documented
pure-shell gsd_run stub (host-integration), single-process hook calls
(workflow-guard:222/271/302), and a deliberately tight 5000ms fast-check hook
(gsd-write-guard.property). Nothing was lowered. process-seam.test.cjs:513
(literal 300) is untouched on purpose -- it tests timeout BEHAVIOR, so raising
it would destroy what it asserts.
Shared file-level constants were the trap here, and were handled per file rather
than by redefinition: GIT_TIMEOUT_MS has ~15 users in git-base-branch and only 1
is a fan-out; WORKTREE_TIMEOUT_MS has 16 users in worktree.test.cjs and 3 are;
PROBE_TIMEOUT_MS has several in three more files. In each the CALL SITE was
changed and the constant left alone, so no single-plumbing-call site silently
inherited a 60s bound. The one exception is hooks-opt-in.test.cjs, where
HOOK_TIMEOUT_MS has exactly one consumer -- spawnHook, the fan-out itself -- so
redefining it is identical in effect and reads better.
Only two of these sites have actually been observed failing. The rest cite that
shared class and those two run ids rather than inventing evidence of their own.
Co-authored-by: sim <sim@local>
GSD Core documentation
Documentation is organised into four quadrants: tutorials help you learn by doing, how-to guides solve specific tasks, reference states authoritative facts, and explanation explores concepts and design decisions.
Language versions: English · Português (pt-BR) · 日本語 · 简体中文
Tutorials
- Your first project — install to first shipped phase, one guaranteed path
- Onboarding an existing codebase — bring GSD Core to a brownfield repo
- Build your first capability — author a tiny declarative capability and watch it act in the loop
- Install your first capability — install a third-party capability end-to-end: consent, verify, check for updates, remove
How-to guides
- Install on your runtime — runtime-specific install steps for all 16 supported runtimes
- Install a minimal GSD and add skills later — install only the core skills, then grow the surface with profiles and
/gsd-surface - Attach a plugin-provided skill to a GSD agent — use the
global:plugin:skillentry form to load Claude Code plugin skills into agent prompts - Discuss a phase — capture implementation decisions before planning begins
- Resolve edge-coverage findings — turn the spec phase's surfaced domain-boundary edges into covered, dismissed, or backstopped spec decisions
- Probe edges in a non-English project — get real edge coverage on a spec written in another language, and tell "no edges here" apart from "the probe could not read it"
- Resolve prohibition findings — turn the spec phase's surfaced must-NOT constraints into resolved, dismissed, or deferred spec decisions
- Resolve an unreachable-workflow finding — wire or fully sweep a shipped workflow that no command, agent, or skill references
- Resolve verify-command path findings — fix an
<automated>verify command whose target directory does not resolve from the executor's cwd - Resolve a contract-drift finding — bring an agent's completion contract, read-tag gate, or deleted-file test reference back into agreement with the registry
- Resolve unreachable-guard findings — fix shell guards whose fallback arm cannot run, and tell "nothing to report" apart from "could not look"
- Resolve an ESLint glob-coverage finding — bring a source file that matches no lint rule under coverage, or record a reasoned exemption
- Read the statusline freshness marker — turn on
state ~N commits back, and tell "STATE.md is fresh" apart from "freshness could not be established" - Consume the planning snapshot — read
planning inspectfrom a dashboard or harness, and tell "nothing to report" apart from "could not look" - Keep planning docs out of a shared repo — make
.planning/local-only, including untracking files git already tracks (the step.gitignorealone cannot do) - Publish PRs without planning artifacts — keep
.planning/committed locally, so worktrees and/gsd-undokeep working, whileplanning.pr_strictkeeps every planning path out of the branch you push - Plan a phase — run research, decompose work, and verify plan quality
- Verify a dependency-compatibility claim — act on a compatibility claim the researcher left
[ASSUMED], and tell "nothing declared" apart from "a constraint is declared" and "the lookup failed" - Execute a phase — run plans in parallel waves with fresh-context subagents
- Verify and ship — walk through completed work, diagnose failures, and create the PR
- Catch complexity before it compounds — enable the post-execute refactor hook, read a proposal's score vs. anchor delta, and accept or decline it
- Run phases autonomously — use autonomous mode for unattended phase execution
- Handle quick and fast tasks — use
/gsd-quickand/gsd-fastfor ad-hoc work outside the phase loop - Configure model profiles — switch between quality, balanced, and budget model tiers
- Control which host runtime GSD reports — read the
agent_runtimeladder, understand what host detection looks at, and pin the runtime when detection is not what you want - Set up cross-AI review — configure a second AI to review code produced by the primary agent
- Scope code review depth by path — escalate
/gsd-code-reviewtodeepfor sensitive directories while the rest of the repo stays at the default depth - Work in parallel with workstreams — run independent lines of work simultaneously using workstreams
- Isolate work with workspaces — use workspaces to sandbox experimental or risky changes
- Debug a failed execution — diagnose and recover from broken or incomplete phase execution
- Interpret scope-conformance warnings — read the advisory the worktree-wave merge emits when a plan branch commits outside its declared scope
- Interpret install-shadow warnings — read the advisory GSD Core emits when a
/gsd-*trigger is installed at both scopes and one silently wins, and tell "nothing to report" apart from "could not look" - Interpret
state validateresults — read thescopereason codes and tell "nothing to report" apart from "could not look" - Spike and sketch — use
/gsd-spikeand/gsd-sketchfor exploratory work before committing to a plan - Design a UI phase — use the UI phase loop for frontend and visual work
- Enable live-DOM verification — opt a project into browser-backed UI acceptance checks during execution, handle the browser-profile lock, and tell "nothing to report" apart from "could not look"
- Develop a Capability for GSD 1.5+ — add feature Capabilities, hook fragments, and registry entries
- Ship a reviewer lane in your capability — declare a
reviewerbody so/gsd-reviewdiscovers, invokes, and renders your external review CLI or model endpoint - List your reviewer lane in the registry — publish a lane you have built to the Reviewer Lane Registry so other people can find and install it
- Take over a capability or EoS integration — assume maintainership of an existing third-party capability, reviewer lane, or EoS host integration through a handoff, an adoption fork, first-party absorption, or a de-listing
- Add or update a host's integration — set a host's documentation-sourced
runtime.hostIntegrationaxes (ADR-1239 Phase A), with theundocumentedsentinel rule - Migrate an install test to the executed plan — convert an
fs.existsSync-probing install test group to a value assertion againstinstallRuntimeArtifacts's executed-plan return, and test against a fake fs adapter - Turn a capability off (and keep it off) — disable a capability via the surface, or gate individual hooks off without removing the capability
- Drive GSD from a tracker issue — start a phase from a GitHub, Linear, or Jira issue
- Migrate from GSD 2 — upgrade an existing GSD 2 project to GSD Core
- Update GSD — re-run the installer to pick up the latest release
- Clean up get-shit-done-cc — remove leftover old-package artifacts that cause a spurious
⬆ /gsd-updateindicator after migrating to@opengsd/gsd-core - Fix the worktree base-mismatch (exit 42) error — resolve the branch-divergence condition that halts parallel phase execution
- Recover and troubleshoot — fix common problems, rebuild context, and uninstall
Reference
- Commands — every command with flags and examples
- Configuration — full config schema, model profiles, git branching strategies
- CLI tools —
gsd-tools.cjsprogrammatic API for workflows and agents - JSON error mode —
gsd-toolsfailure channels: faults (stderr, exit 1) vs degraded results (stdout, exit 0), and the reason-code taxonomy - Features — complete feature index
- Inventory — installed skills and surface map
- STATE.md schema — field-by-field reference for
.planning/STATE.md - CONTEXT.md schema — field-by-field reference for
.planning/phases/<N>/CONTEXT.md - PLAN.md schema — field-by-field reference for
.planning/phases/<N>/PLAN.md - Planning artifacts — all
.planning/files and their roles - Review and verification capabilities — code review, security, and Nyquist capability ownership and hook contracts
- Gate predicates — canonical specification of the phase-gate predicate vocabulary
- Capability matrix — generated catalogue of every capability's role, tier, extension points, hook kinds, and
engines.gsd - Capability manifest — the full
capability.jsonschema and validation rules gsd capabilitycommand — install / update / remove / list reference for third-party capabilities- Workflow fragments — in-file
<!-- gsd:section -->marker grammar for fragmentizing workflow markdown at emission time - Reviewer Lane Registry — generated catalogue of third-party reviewer lanes, with their flags, transport, and install commands
Explanation
- Context engineering — how context rot forms and how GSD Core prevents it
- The phase loop — design rationale for the Discuss → Plan → Execute → Verify → Ship cycle
- Multi-agent orchestration — how subagents are spawned, scoped, and coordinated
- Security model — trust boundaries, permissions, and safe automation
- The capability trust model — why third-party capabilities are gated by consent + integrity + reversibility, not a sandbox
- How overlay capabilities compose — why first-party always wins and how the loader resolves precedence, conflicts, and fail-open load-failure warnings
- Architecture — system architecture, agent model, and data flow
- The Embeddable Orchestration System — one public, versioned contract for embedding GSD across many hosts
- Discuss modes — assumptions mode vs interview mode for
/gsd-discuss-phase - Context monitoring — context window monitoring hook architecture
- Issue-driven orchestration — recipe for driving GSD from a tracker issue using existing primitives
Related
- What's new in 1.7.0 — curated highlights of the 1.7.0 release
- Root README — landing page, quickstart, and documentation overview
- Changelog — release history