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msd-core/docs/reference/state-md.md
Tom Boucher ddde001af6 enhance(#3873): the STATE.md schema — one owner, generated artifacts (#3880) 
* test(#3873): failing-first locale parity, plus tripwires for what must not move

Pins ADR-3473 §8.8 at the artifact a reader actually sees. The English STATE.md
reference carries a Status lifecycle section that is missing from all four
translations — the section documenting the status enum whose clobbering is
#3853. The test derives the heading set rather than hard-coding the missing
one, and names the locale and the heading when it fails.

Two tripwires that must pass today and after. The field-drift guard still
catches a re-derived fallback ladder: §8.8 instructs deleting that script, and
that instruction rests on a wrong premise about what it guards, so the test
stops a future reader from deleting it on the ADR's word. And last_activity's
label resolution is pinned to what ships today, because it is declared in one
of the two tables this phase consolidates and not the other — the
consolidation must not silently pick a side.

The locale test buckets under docs rather than state, which is what it tests;
that bucket is allowlisted with justification rather than folded into an
unrelated docs suite. It reads only markdown, so it carries no allow-test-rule
marker — a marker there would suppress nothing and would grow the unverified
pool against its ceiling.

Refs #3873

* feat(#3873): one schema owns the STATE.md key set, three tables become projections

ADR-3473 §8.8. The key set was declared in four places that had to agree by
hand and already did not: FIELD_CLASSIFICATION, FRONTMATTER_BODY_SOURCE,
FRONTMATTER_KEY_TO_BODY_LABEL and buildStateFrontmatter's emit behavior. One
frozen null-prototype schema now declares each key's type, enum, cardinality,
source, preservation, body source, body label, accepted parse shapes and
whether it is emitted unconditionally; the three tables are derived from it at
module load.

The projections are byte-identical to the literals they replace, key order
included, and the parity tests compare against verbatim copies of today's
tables rather than re-deriving both sides from the schema — a parity test fed
from one source proves nothing, which is how a consolidation ships a changed
policy under a green test.

last_activity was the live disagreement: present in one table, absent from the
other. The schema declares what ships today rather than the tidier answer, and
a test pins it.

The schema is a leaf module and owns the four field-policy types, re-exported
from state-transition so existing importers are untouched — the same split
health-diagnostic-types made to break a CJS require cycle.

Refs #3873

* feat(#3873): generate the schema-derived regions, parity-check the prose tables

ADR-3473 §8.8's generator half. gen-state-md-docs.cjs owns marked regions in
the shipped template and all five reference docs, follows gen-features.cjs's
fail-closed contract, and is wired into regen:derived and lint:generated-sync.

The Status lifecycle section was missing from all four translations — the
section documenting the status enum behind #3853 — and is now generated into
every locale. Field cardinality is a new generated table: pure schema data,
no prose, so nothing to lose.

The Field-reference and Status-values tables are parity-CHECKED rather than
generated. Their Purpose, When-populated and Matched-text columns are
genuinely hand-translated per locale, and §8.8 itself says prose stays
hand-translated; generating them from an English registry would overwrite four
locales' translations on every write. The row set is checked against the schema
instead, so a key added to one and not the other fails, which is what field
drift actually means. Building that check found last_activity_desc
undocumented in all five tables.

Three keys the docs describe are absent from the schema — active_phase,
next_action, next_phases. They are grandfathered by name, not by wildcard, so a
fourth fails: a declared gap with a forcing function rather than a silent one.

Refs #3873

* fix(#3873): declare what the parsers do, and close the shape-parity gap

Two declarations in the new schema described intended behavior rather than
actual — the defect class this epic exists to end, committed inside the epic.
Both were caught by executing the parsers instead of reading their docstrings.

current_plan.acceptedShapes claimed ['N', 'N of M']. Standalone, the hybrid
shape errors; the path that looks like support is parseInt truncating '2 of 5'
to 2 and discarding the rest. Narrowed to ['N']. The parser is deliberately NOT
fixed here: that is #3784 and PR #3791 is already doing it. When #3791 lands
this row must widen, and the shape test will go red until it does — the schema
and the parser cannot drift apart quietly, which is what §8.8's checked-not-
generated rule is for.

STATUS_LIFECYCLE_ENUM claimed to be the closed set status can hold.
normalizeStateStatus passes unrecognized prose through unchanged, so it is not
closed at runtime. The seven members are the canonical values it maps onto; the
docstring now says that and the test asserts the real lenient contract.

Closes the acceptance item that a test asserts the parsers accept exactly the
declared shapes: the check is table-driven over every row carrying
acceptedShapes, guarded against passing vacuously on an empty set, and fails
loudly if a future row has no registered driver. Adds the unwired-label throw
and the fast-check property that every projection agrees with its schema row.

Refs #3873

* fix(#3873): keep the shipped template's frontmatter first, and make row 27 able to fail

The remote matrix caught 12 failures with one cause. Making the template's
frontmatter a generated region wrapped it in its own yaml fence ahead of the
markdown fence, so extractFileTemplate and readShippedStateTemplateBody — which
both match the single markdown block — found the heading first, not the
frontmatter. That breaks the contract every new project's STATE.md is created
from: bug #21 and epic #1969 B8 pin that the File Template block starts with
frontmatter and carries gsd_state_version.

The markers now sit inside the single markdown fence, so the fence opens before
the frontmatter and the region still ends ahead of the heading. Same layout as
before this phase, with markers embedded rather than a second fence.

Row 27 existed to catch exactly this and did not, because it was writer-seeded:
it asserted against the generator's own output shape, so it passed on the broken
template. It now parses the fence the way production does and was verified to
fail against the broken shape before being trusted against the fixed one. A test
that would not have caught the bug it exists to prevent is worse than no test.

The emitted-attribution failure was separate and the fragment was the wrong
remedy: gsd-core/templates/state.md self-attributes under a verbatim-copy
identity rule, so a diff touching it needs no acknowledgment. Fragment deleted
rather than left explaining nothing.

Refs #3873

* docs(#3873): how to change the STATE.md schema

The phase gate was right and my docs artifact was wrong. I listed
lint:generated-sync as the second enablement step, which is a verification
command dressed as one, and then claimed a one-step sequence owed no how-to.

The real sequence is build:lib then regen:derived, and the ordering is a trap:
the generator reads the COMPILED schema, so regenerating before building
regenerates against the previous schema and commits artifacts that look
plausible while disagreeing with the code just written. A reference table
cannot carry an ordering dependency; that is what the how-to test is for.

The page covers adding, changing and removing a key, every reason code the
check emits and what to do about each, what is generated versus hand-translated
and why the two prose-bearing tables are parity-checked instead of generated,
adding a language, and the three grandfathered keys. Indexed from docs/README.md.

Refs #3873

* chore(#3873): backfill changeset PR number

---------

Co-authored-by: sim <sim@local>
2026-08-26 01:57:47 -04:00

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# STATE.md schema reference
`STATE.md` is GSD Core's living project-memory file — a single Markdown document that records where a project stands, what happened last, and what to run next. This page documents its structure. See [docs index](../README.md).
---
## Overview
Every project managed by GSD Core keeps one `STATE.md` at `.planning/STATE.md`. It is read at the start of every workflow and written after every significant action. The file combines:
- **YAML frontmatter** — machine-readable fields consumed by the status-line hook (`parseStateMd`) and the `gsd-tools state` commands.
- **Markdown body** — human-readable sections covering current position, accumulated context, session continuity, and performance metrics.
The file is intentionally small (target: under 100 lines). It is a digest of the project's state, not an archive.
---
## YAML frontmatter
Frontmatter appears between `---` delimiters at the very start of the file. All fields except `gsd_state_version` and `status` are optional; fields may be absent when their data is not yet available.
### Annotated example
```yaml
---
gsd_state_version: '1.0'
milestone: v2.0
milestone_name: Code Quality
status: executing
# Phase-lifecycle fields — all optional (added in v1.40.0, issue #2833)
active_phase: "4.5"
next_action: execute-phase
next_phases: ["4.5"]
progress:
total_phases: 17
completed_phases: 10
total_plans: 84
completed_plans: 47
percent: 59
# Additional fields written by syncStateFrontmatter
current_phase: "4"
current_phase_name: Observability
current_plan: "3"
last_updated: "2026-06-01T12:34:56.789Z"
state_head: 4f3c2b1a9e8d7c6b5a4f3e2d1c0b9a8f7e6d5c4b
last_activity: "2026-06-01"
stopped_at: "Phase 4 P3 execution complete"
paused_at: null
---
```
### Field reference
| Field | Type | When populated | Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|
| `gsd_state_version` | string (`'1.0'`) | Always | Schema version; written on first `state.*` call by `syncStateFrontmatter`. |
| `milestone` | string (e.g. `v2.0`) | When a milestone is configured | Current milestone version, read from the project's config. |
| `milestone_name` | string | When a milestone is configured | Human-readable milestone label (e.g. `Code Quality`). |
| `status` | string | Always | Current lifecycle stage. Normalised by `normalizeStateStatus()` — see [status values](#status-values). |
| `active_phase` | string (e.g. `"4.5"`) | An orchestrator command is in flight on this phase | The phase number currently being processed. Set to `null` when between phases. |
| `next_action` | string | Idle, with a recommended command | The slash command to run next: `discuss-phase`, `plan-phase`, `execute-phase`, or `verify-phase`. Set to `null` when an orchestrator is in flight or no recommendation is available. |
| `next_phases` | YAML flow array (e.g. `["4.5"]`) | Goes with `next_action` | The phase ID(s) the `next_action` applies to (typically 1–2 entries). Set to `null` under the same conditions as `next_action`. |
| `progress.total_phases` | integer | When phase data is available | Total number of phases in the current milestone, derived from ROADMAP.md and the phases directory. |
| `progress.completed_phases` | integer | When phase data is available | Number of phases that have all plan summaries on disk (i.e. every plan completed). |
| `progress.total_plans` | integer | When plan files exist | Sum of all plan files across phases in the current milestone. |
| `progress.completed_plans` | integer | When summary files exist | Sum of completed plan summaries (one SUMMARY.md per executed plan). |
| `progress.percent` | integer 0–100 | When progress data is available | Milestone progress in the **phase dimension** (`min(completed_plans/total_plans, completed_phases/total_phases)`). The status-line progress bar is only rendered when this field is present — its absence suppresses the bar. |
| `current_phase` | string | When a phase is executing | Phase number extracted from the body `Current Phase:` field. |
| `current_phase_name` | string | When a phase has a name | Phase name extracted from the body `Current Phase Name:` field. |
| `current_plan` | string | When a plan is in progress | Plan number extracted from the body `Current Plan:` field. |
| `last_updated` | ISO-8601 timestamp | Always (on write) | Timestamp of the last `syncStateFrontmatter` call; written by `realClock.nowIso()`. |
| `state_head` | string (40-char sha) | On write, when the project's own git repo resolves | Full commit sha STATE.md was written against (#2573). Omitted entirely outside a git repo, when the resolved repo is not the project's own, or in a `planning.sub_repos` workspace — an unverifiable stamp degrades to absent rather than asserting provenance the file does not have. Recomputed on every write and never carried forward. |
| `last_activity` | string | When set in body | Date of the last activity, extracted from the body `Last Activity:` field. |
| `last_activity_desc` | string | When set in body | Description of the last activity, extracted from the body `Last Activity Description:` field. |
| `stopped_at` | string | When a stop point was recorded | Description of the last completed action; scoped to the `## Session` body section to avoid matching archive prose. |
| `paused_at` | string | When the project is paused | Freeform description of the pause point; absent or `null` when not paused. |
<!-- STATE-MD-SCHEMA:START:cardinality — generated by scripts/gen-state-md-docs.cjs from src/state-md-schema.cts; do not edit by hand -->
### Field cardinality
| Field | Cardinality |
|---|---|
| `gsd_state_version` | one |
| `milestone` | optional |
| `milestone_name` | optional |
| `current_phase` | optional |
| `current_phase_name` | optional |
| `current_plan` | optional |
| `status` | one |
| `stopped_at` | optional |
| `paused_at` | optional |
| `last_updated` | one |
| `last_activity` | optional |
| `last_activity_desc` | optional |
| `state_head` | optional |
| `progress.total_phases` | optional |
| `progress.completed_phases` | optional |
| `progress.total_plans` | optional |
| `progress.completed_plans` | optional |
| `progress.percent` | optional |
<!-- STATE-MD-SCHEMA:END:cardinality -->
> **Known limitation — multi-repo workspaces.** In a workspace configured with
> [`planning.sub_repos`](../CONFIGURATION.md#planning), the freshness hint reports *unknown*
> rather than a commit age, and `state_head` is omitted. The outer workspace can own both
> `.planning/` and its own git repo while every code commit lands in a nested child repo, so the
> outer `HEAD` would not advance when the code does — measuring against it would report
> "known fresh" for a STATE.md that is arbitrarily far behind. Reporting unknown is deliberate:
> a wrong answer here is worse than no answer. Aggregating freshness across several child
> histories needs a defined semantics and is not part of this feature.
### Status values
`normalizeStateStatus()` in `gsd-core/bin/lib/state-document.cjs` maps raw body text to these canonical values:
| Canonical value | Matched text (case-insensitive) |
|---|---|
| `discussing` | contains `discussing` |
| `planning` | contains `planning` or `ready to plan` |
| `executing` | contains `executing`, `in progress`, or `ready to execute` |
| `verifying` | contains `verif` |
| `completed` | contains `complete` or `done` |
| `paused` | contains `paused` or `stopped`, or `paused_at` is present |
| `unknown` | none of the above |
When an orchestrator command is in flight, the convention (issue #2833) is to write the lifecycle stage directly to `status`:
| Command | `status` while in flight |
|---|---|
| `/gsd-discuss-phase` | `discussing` |
| `/gsd-plan-phase` | `planning` |
| `/gsd-execute-phase` | `executing` |
| `/gsd-verify-work` | `verifying` |
<!-- STATE-MD-SCHEMA:START:status-lifecycle — generated by scripts/gen-state-md-docs.cjs from src/state-md-schema.cts; do not edit by hand -->
### Status lifecycle (ADR-2207)
The `Status` field follows a strict lifecycle across phase and milestone boundaries:
| Value | Written by | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| `Ready to plan` | `completePhaseCore` (non-last phase) | Next phase is ready for planning |
| `All phases complete` | `completePhaseCore` (last phase) | All phases done; milestone awaiting formal close |
| `<version> milestone complete` | `milestoneCompleteCore` | Milestone formally closed and archived |
| `Awaiting next milestone` | `milestoneCompleteCore` | Terminal/archived state |
Phase-completion verbs never write `Milestone complete` (the overloaded bare value was removed in #2204 per ADR-2207 to decouple phase-level writes from milestone termination).
<!-- STATE-MD-SCHEMA:END:status-lifecycle -->
---
## Status-line rendering scenes
`formatGsdState()` in `hooks/gsd-statusline.js` reads the parsed frontmatter and emits the **first matching scene**. If no new lifecycle fields apply, rendering falls through to the original format byte-for-byte unchanged from v1.38.x.
| Scene | Trigger | Display example |
|---|---|---|
| **1. Phase active** | `active_phase` is populated | `v2.0 [██░░░░░░░░] 20% · Phase 4.5 executing` |
| **2. Idle, next recommended** | `active_phase` is null AND both `next_action` and `next_phases` are populated | `v2.0 [██░░░░░░░░] 20% · next execute-phase 4.5` |
| **3. Milestone complete** | `percent` is `100` OR `completed_phases == total_phases` | `v2.0 [██████████] 100% · milestone complete` |
| **4. Default fallback** | None of the above match | `v1.9 Code Quality · executing · ph 1/5` (existing format) |
**Scene priority:** when both `active_phase` and `next_action` are populated, Scene 1 wins — an orchestrator is in flight, so a "next recommendation" would be misleading. This priority is enforced by check order in `formatGsdState()` and covered by the `"scene priority"` suite in `tests/gsd-statusline.test.cjs`.
The progress bar (`[██░░░░░░░░] 20%`) is appended to the milestone segment only when `progress.percent` is present in frontmatter; absent means no bar.
---
## Frontmatter parsing constraints
The status-line hook uses regex-based parsing (no full YAML library), so the following constraints apply. They are tested in `tests/gsd-statusline.test.cjs`.
1. **Frontmatter must start at the very first character of the file.** Anything — including comments — above the opening `---` invalidates the match. The opening `---` line must be exactly that, with no trailing spaces.
2. **Comments inside nested blocks are not supported.** The `progress:` block parser requires the next line to be `[ \t]+\w+:`. Inserting a `# comment` between `progress:` and its first key breaks the match and the bar disappears. Any documentation belongs in the `STATE.md` body, not inside frontmatter blocks.
3. **`next_phases` primary format is single-line flow.** The parser first tries `next_phases: ["4.5", "4.6"]`. Block sequences (`- 4.5\n- 4.6`) are also parsed but are less reliable for status-line rendering. Prefer single-line flow for `next_phases` to keep the regex-based parser predictable. If many candidate phases need recording for documentation purposes, store them in the `STATE.md` body.
If a future change replaces the regex parser with a full YAML library, these constraints can be relaxed and the tests updated accordingly.
---
## Markdown body sections
The body (everything after the closing `---`) follows the template in `gsd-core/templates/state.md`. The standard sections are:
### Project Reference
Points to `.planning/PROJECT.md`. Contains:
- **Core value** — the one-liner from `PROJECT.md`'s Core Value section.
- **Current focus** — which phase is active.
### Current Position
Where the project stands right now:
| Field | Format |
|---|---|
| `Phase:` | `X of Y (Phase name)` |
| `Plan:` | `A of B in current phase` |
| `Status:` | Free text, e.g. `Ready to execute`, `Executing Phase 4`, `Phase complete — ready for verification` |
| `Last activity:` | ISO date (`YYYY-MM-DD`) when handler-written; narrative prose when executor-authored |
| `Progress:` | Visual bar, e.g. `[████░░░░░░] 40%` |
The `Status:` and `Last activity:` fields in this section are updated by GSD handlers when the existing value is a known template default (Knuth invariant: executor-authored values are preserved). The full list of known handler defaults is in `KNOWN_TEMPLATE_DEFAULTS` inside `gsd-core/bin/lib/state-document.cjs`.
### Performance Metrics
Execution velocity tracking:
- Total plans completed, average duration per plan.
- Per-phase breakdown table (`Phase | Plans | Total | Avg/Plan`).
- Recent trend: Improving / Stable / Degrading.
Updated after each plan completion.
### Accumulated Context
**Decisions** — a summary of recent decisions affecting current work (full log lives in `PROJECT.md`). Added via `gsd-tools state add-decision`.
**Pending Todos** — count and reference to `.planning/todos/pending/`. Captured via `/gsd-capture`.
**Blockers/Concerns** — issues affecting future work, prefixed with the originating phase. Added via `gsd-tools state add-blocker`; resolved via `gsd-tools state resolve-blocker`.
### Session Continuity
Enables instant session resumption:
- `Last session:` — ISO-8601 timestamp of the last session.
- `Stopped at:` — description of the last completed action.
- `Resume file:` — path to a `.continue-here*.md` file if one exists, otherwise `None`.
---
## Backward compatibility
The phase-lifecycle fields (`active_phase`, `next_action`, `next_phases`, and `progress.percent` for the bar) are **additive and opt-in per project**:
- A `STATE.md` with none of the lifecycle fields populated renders **byte-for-byte identically** to v1.38.x and earlier.
- Adding any lifecycle field is opt-in — the renderer degrades gracefully when fields are absent.
- The progress bar is opt-in even when the `progress` block exists: only `progress.percent` triggers the bar; `total_phases` and `completed_phases` alone do not.
The `formatGsdState #2833 backward compatibility` test suite in `tests/gsd-statusline.test.cjs` locks this guarantee; any change that breaks legacy `STATE.md` rendering will fail the suite.
---
## Related
- [Planning artifacts](planning-artifacts.md)
- [Configuration](../CONFIGURATION.md)
- [The phase loop](../explanation/the-phase-loop.md)
- [docs index](../README.md)
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