2a73f53cb3
* test(#3204): failing-first suite for the clobbered phase count A project declaring six phases with four phase directories on disk had state.record-session write progress.total_phases: 4 — #2828 regressing at 1.9.1, reported in #3204 with a deterministic reproduction. Before the fix in the following commit, these rows FAILED (wrote 4, expected 6): a flat roadmap carrying `## Progress`; one carrying `## Overview` and `## Phase Details`; the CRLF variant of the first. Two more, found by adversarial review and added after the first fix attempt, failed against that attempt: structural headings interleaved among flat phase headings, and this repo's own bundled-template shape (a `## Phases` wrapper around a single nested milestone). The #1761 control — sibling milestone sections must keep falling back to the disk count — passes both before and after, so the fix has something it must not break. Assertions read progress.total_phases through the product's own frontmatter parser via `state json --raw`, never a regex over STATE.md. Rows 12 and 13 are hostile: a phase heading carrying a version token, and a version heading inside a fenced code block; neither may count as milestone sectioning. Refs #3185, #3204 Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com> * fix(#3204): milestone sectioning is vocabulary, not heading position buildStateFrontmatter chooses total_phases between the ROADMAP's declared phase count and the on-disk directory count, and refuses the roadmap count when hasMilestoneSectioning says the document is milestone-sectioned — because a whole-document count would then conflate sibling milestones (#1761). That predicate returned true for ANY non-Phase level-2/3 heading, so a flat roadmap carrying an ordinary `## Progress` was called sectioned and the disk count clobbered the declared one: six declared phases, four directories, total_phases written as 4, converging on the truth only once the last directory happened to exist. That is #2828 regressing at 1.9.1, and it came from this epic — #3184 replaced state.cts's hand-rolled #2828 guard with this predicate, and the replacement is strictly more permissive than the guard it retired. Three position-based models were tried and all failed, because position does not carry milestone-ness: - any non-Phase heading (shipped) — over-detects, giving #3204; - strict nesting/ownership — misses same-level siblings, regressing #1761, and false-positives on the bundled template, where `## Phases` wraps a single `### v1.1`; - adjacency — reproduced live: `## Overview` and `## Notes` interleaved among six phase headings are two owning candidates, so a 6-phase roadmap with 2 directories wrote 2. A heading is now a milestone heading iff it is a non-Phase heading carrying a milestone signal: a version token, a status marker, or the word Milestone. Sectioning means two or more, since one cannot conflate siblings. Known limit, recorded in the doc comment rather than hidden: two milestone sections carrying none of those three signals are not detected. Also drops buildStateFrontmatter's local dedup-key regex, flagged in-source as diverging from the canonical token rule, for phaseKeyFromDir — the remainder of #3185, since #3222 had already routed the enumeration itself through listMilestonePhaseDirs. #1514, #2445 and #3017 are preserved untouched. Closes #3185 Fixes #3204 Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com> * docs(#3185): changeset, glossary entry and ADR status for the phase-count fix CONTEXT.md's Roadmap Parser Module entry never named hasMilestoneSectioning, so the predicate whose semantics this change reverses had no glossary presence at all — a PR gate for a module/seam change. Added, covering the vocabulary model, the three position-based models that failed, and the residual limit. ADR-3180 recorded the fifth enumeration copy as unowned in four places. It is owned now. Amendment 4's scope table row 1 also carried an error worth keeping visible rather than rewriting: it claimed Phase 3 merged without routing the state writers, when #3222 had in fact routed the enumeration — the audit read Amendment 3's silence about the symbol names as absence of the work. The real gap was the trust discriminator one layer above, which is what #3204 was. Changeset is Fixed and leads with the symptom a user sees — a phase count that shrinks to match how many phase directories happen to exist yet — and carries the known limit forward rather than leaving it in a source comment. Refs #3185, #3204 Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com> * fix(#3185): stop quoting the retired phase-token regex in a comment The remote runner failed tests/phase-id-drift-guard.test.cjs: the comment explaining that the local dedup regex had been replaced by phaseKeyFromDir quoted that regex verbatim, and scripts/lint-phase-id-drift.cjs scans for the literal token without caring whether it sits in code or in prose. That is the guard being right, not over-eager — a quoted pattern is one paste away from being live again, which is exactly how the copy it replaced spread. Described in prose instead. Worth recording: this guard is check:phase-id-drift, which lint:ci does not run — it is enforced by tests/phase-id-drift-guard.test.cjs. A green lint:ci is therefore not evidence the drift guards pass. Refs #3185 Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com> * chore(#3185): backfill changeset PR number (#3230) Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com> --------- Co-authored-by: sim <sim@local> Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Architecture Decision Records
This directory contains Architecture Decision Records (ADRs) for GSD.
Each ADR documents one architectural decision: what was decided, why, and what consequences follow. ADRs are append-only. Amendments extend existing ADRs with a dated section rather than replacing them.
Reading this corpus
Start with the index below, and respect the status. The index is grouped so that the first table — Active decisions — is the set that governs the system as it stands. An ADR in Superseded, Retired, and Legacy is historical: it records what was once decided and names what replaced it. Do not cite it as current architecture.
Two things the index makes explicit, because getting them wrong has actually misled readers here:
- "Read first" on an active ADR points at a broader ADR that now frames it. A decision can be entirely correct and still not be the whole picture. The runtime capability descriptor (ADR-1016) is live and load-bearing, but ADR-1239 (EoS — GSD as an Embeddable Orchestration Engine) subsumes it as the declarative adapter and inverts its direction: GSD is the engine a host embeds, not an installer that projects onto a host. For how GSD meets a host, EoS is the current frame.
Proposedmeans not ratified — and it is kept honest. On 2026-07-17 the corpus was audited against the shipped tree and nine ADRs whose decisions had demonstrably shipped were ratified toAccepted, each carrying a dated Ratification section with the evidence (see ADR-857 for the fullest example). The ADRs that remainProposedareProposedfor a reason recorded in the file — an unmet acceptance criterion, an outstanding phase, or a successor ADR already planned — not through neglect. Trust the label; if you think it is wrong, prove it in a dated section and see Ratifying a staleProposed.
Naming Convention
New ADRs use issue#-prefix slug naming:
docs/adr/<issue#>-<kebab-slug>.md
Examples: 2264-golden-parity-redesign.md, 1239-gsd-embeddable-orchestration-engine.md.
Why
Two developers computing "next ADR number" locally against main will independently pick the same integer and both ship. The collision is already on disk — 0010-* exists twice and 0011-* exists three times. GitHub issue numbers are server-assigned and atomic: the moment you open an issue, that number is reserved globally. Two PRs that both edit the ### Fixed block of CHANGELOG.md always conflict on merge — two PRs that each use a distinct issue# as their ADR prefix never collide. Same shape, same solution.
Legacy naming is not Legacy status
Files 0001-* through 0012-* are preserved as immutable historical record of the old local-compute numbering. The duplicate 0010-* and the three-way 0011-* are documented residue of that convention — not patterns to imitate. Do not renumber them.
This is the single authoritative statement of the legacy range.
docs/contributor-standards.mdreferences it rather than restating it, so the two cannot drift.
Two other zero-padded files look legacy but are not: 0174-retire-gsd-sdk-package-boundary.md (issue #174) and 0656-research-module-seam.md (issue #656) are mis-padded modern ADRs — modern, issue-numbered files whose four-digit padding is a mistake. They are NOT part of the legacy sequential set above and are not "old local-compute numbering" residue.
This is a statement about filenames only. Many of those ADRs are Accepted and load-bearing today (ADR-0002, ADR-0004, ADR-0008, ADR-0009). An old filename says nothing about whether a decision still holds. The Legacy status in the table below is a separate claim — see the vocabulary.
Because 0010-* and 0011-* each resolve to more than one file, a bare cross-reference like "ADR-0011" is genuinely ambiguous. Link the file (see Lifecycle rules).
Full process
See CONTRIBUTING.md — "Proposing an ADR or PRD" for the end-to-end workflow: opening the issue, waiting for approval, naming the file, and submitting the PR.
PRDs live in docs/prd/, not here. (0011-review-default-reviewers-prd.md predates that directory and is kept in place as frozen historical record.)
Lifecycle rules
These are enforced by scripts/gen-adr-index.cjs, which runs in CI via npm run lint:generated-sync. A violation fails the build with the exact file and fix.
1. Every ADR declares one status from the canonical vocabulary
The first word of the Status field must be one of:
| Status | Means | Obligation |
|---|---|---|
Accepted |
Decided and in force. Cite it. | — |
Proposed |
Decided in principle, not ratified. Do not cite as settled. | If the work has demonstrably shipped, ratify it (below) — do not leave the label lying. |
Superseded |
A specific newer ADR replaced this decision. | Must name the successor as a file link. |
Retired |
What this ADR decided no longer exists at all, and no single ADR replaced it. | Say what was removed and when. |
Legacy |
Frozen historical record, kept for provenance; not a pattern to follow. | Say why it is frozen. |
Prose may follow the token (Superseded by [ADR-0174](0174-retire-gsd-sdk-package-boundary.md) (2026-05-23); originally Accepted (2026-05-09)). Both the bullet form (- **Status:** Accepted) and the table form (| **Status** | Accepted |) are accepted.
2. Cross-references to other ADRs are file links, never bare ids
Write [ADR-0011](0011-skill-surface-budget-module.md), not ADR-0011. Bare ids are ambiguous for 0010/0011, and unlinked references cannot be checked.
If you mean an issue, write #857 — not ADR-857. (An ADR and its owning issue often share a number; that is intentional and not a conflict.)
3. Supersession and subsumption are symmetric
These are different relations. Do not conflate them:
Supersedes/Superseded by— the target is replaced. Its status becomesSuperseded.Subsumes/Subsumed by— the target still holds, but a broader ADR now frames it. Its status is unchanged; it becomes a component of the larger decision.
If A declares either relation toward B, B must record the reciprocal. A one-way pointer is the failure this corpus actually suffered: ADR-1239 declared it subsumed four ADRs, none of which said so, and none of which pointed back — so a reader landing on any of them concluded the superseded frame was the way forward.
Only an Accepted ADR is owed the back-link. A Proposed ADR's claim is prospective: it has not taken effect, so its target is not marked. On ratification, the check begins demanding the back-links.
4. The declared id matches the filename
An H1 of # ADR-0175: … in a file named 218-*.md is a rename that never finished. The id in the title must match the filename's prefix.
Ratifying a stale Proposed
A stale Proposed is not cosmetic: it tells contributors and agents that live architecture is an unbuilt idea. Fix it — but on evidence, not vibes.
The bar. All four must hold before flipping to Accepted:
- The decided mechanism demonstrably exists in the tree — name the files, symbols, and tests.
- The owning issue is closed as completed. A closed issue is not proof:
stateReasonof not planned / duplicate means the decision was dropped (that isLegacyorRetired, notAccepted). - No material part is unshipped. If the ADR defines phases and one is outstanding, or states its own bar for acceptance and that bar is unmet, it stays
Proposed. - No later ADR supersedes it, and no approved issue already plans its graduation as separate work.
The procedure. Set the status to Accepted — ratified <date> (originally Proposed <date>), add a dated ## Ratification section holding the evidence, then run node scripts/gen-adr-index.cjs --write. If the ADR claims to supersede or subsume others, the gate will now demand their back-links — that is the point. Ratify deliberately.
Two traps worth knowing, both hit during the 2026-07-17 audit:
- Shipped code is necessary, not sufficient. Eight ADRs had every named module, symbol, and test present and their epics closed — and still failed the bar: ADR-2264's own headline acceptance criterion is unmet in the tree, ADR-230's decided branch protection does not match the live API, ADR-660's namesake mechanism is performed by hand, and ADR-959 has an approved issue planning its graduation as its own ADR. Verify the decision, not just the code.
- "Supersedes" is often "subsumes". Read what the ADR means before the gate makes you act on what it says. ADR-857 said "Supersedes (generalizes)"; taken literally, ratifying it would have stamped two live seams (ADR-0011, ADR-58) as dead. The parenthetical was the truth; the field name was wrong.
Maintaining the index
The index is generated. Do not hand-edit it. Everything between the ADR-INDEX:START / ADR-INDEX:END markers is derived from the ADR files themselves:
node scripts/gen-adr-index.cjs # print the index
node scripts/gen-adr-index.cjs --write # regenerate it into this file
node scripts/gen-adr-index.cjs --check # CI: fail if stale or invalid
After adding an ADR, or changing any ADR's status or relations, run --write and commit the result. npm run lint:generated-sync runs --check in CI, so a missing or stale row fails the build rather than rotting silently.
This replaces a hand-maintained table that had drifted to 40 of 65 ADRs — the entire capability family and EoS itself were missing from it, which is precisely why the ADRs a reader most needed were the ones they could not find.
Index
Active decisions (57)
These govern the system as it stands. Cite these.
| ADR | Title | Status | Read first |
|---|---|---|---|
| ADR-0001 | Dispatch policy module as single seam for query execution outcomes | Accepted | — |
| ADR-0002 | Command Contract Validation Module | Accepted | — |
| ADR-0003 | Model Catalog Module as single source of truth for agent profiles and runtime tier defaults | Accepted | — |
| ADR-0004 | Planning Workspace Module as single seam for worktree and workstream state | Accepted | — |
| ADR-0006 | Planning Path Projection Module for SDK query handlers | Accepted | — |
| ADR-0008 | Installer Migration Module owns install-time upgrade safety | Accepted | — |
| ADR-0009 | Shell Command Projection Module owns runtime-aware OS command rendering | Accepted | — |
| ADR-0011 | review.default_reviewers config key scopes the no-flag /gsd-review fan-out |
Accepted | — |
| ADR-0011 | Skill Surface Budget Module owns install-time profile staging and runtime surface control | Accepted | ADR-857 |
| ADR-15 | Cross-AI Plan Convergence via Existing Orchestration Commands | Accepted | — |
| ADR-22 | Plan-vs-codebase drift guard: defaults and symbol-resolver seam | Accepted | — |
| ADR-58 | Runtime Install Policy Module owns the typed install-plan projection | Accepted | ADR-1239, ADR-857 |
| ADR-0174 | Retire @opengsd/gsd-sdk package boundary — single-runtime collapse | Accepted | — |
| ADR-218 | Harden release-workflow version validation — reject leading zeros and pre-check npm | Accepted | — |
| ADR-227 | Input validation must check semantic shape, not just type | Accepted | — |
| ADR-415 | Prevent stale-base reintroduction of retired runtime tokens | Accepted | — |
| ADR-452 | Adopt standard ESLint flat-config lint harness | Accepted | — |
| ADR-456 | Test-rigor architecture — deterministic scheduling, antagonistic tier, typed-surface mandate, and delete-bad-tests policy | Accepted | — |
| ADR-457 | Generation model for bin/lib/*.cjs type safety |
Accepted | — |
| ADR-550 | spec-phase probe pattern and prohibition contract | Accepted | — |
| ADR-0656 | Research Module — L2-hybrid seam for cached, curated-first research | Accepted | — |
| ADR-766 | Claude Code Plugin Manifest Module owns the projection of gsd-core surfaces onto the Claude Code plugin contract | Accepted | — |
| ADR-857 | Capability system — five-step loop as core, features as plug-ins behind Loop Extension Points | Accepted | — |
| ADR-894 | Capability declaration format + registry generation | Accepted | ADR-1239 |
| ADR-959 | Capability Command Contribution | Accepted | — |
| ADR-1016 | Runtime Capability Descriptor | Accepted | ADR-1239 |
| ADR-1235 | Migrate agent conversion to the descriptor-driven install path | Accepted | — |
| ADR-1239 | GSD as an Embeddable Orchestration Engine | Accepted | — |
| ADR-1244 | Capability Ecosystem: third-party authoring, versioned manifests, and URL import/upgrade/remove | Accepted | — |
| ADR-1372 | Canonical markdown-structure parsing — the markdown-sectionizer seam |
Accepted | — |
| ADR-1411 | Resolution must report provenance, not fall open silently | Accepted | — |
| ADR-1508 | Runtime Artifact Conversion Module owns per-runtime content rewriting | Accepted | — |
| ADR-1517 | Reviewer instances — bounded config surface for same-adapter multi-model review | Accepted | — |
| ADR-1577 | Untrusted-input boundary + opt-in injection blocking | Accepted | — |
| ADR-1593 | Skill mapping & converter methodology across runtimes | Accepted | — |
| ADR-1610 | workflow & agent size-budget ratchet (per-file byte baseline + tier hard caps) | Accepted | — |
| ADR-1703 | Cross-platform portability enforcement as AST ESLint rules | Accepted | — |
| ADR-1769 | STATE.md Transition Module — intent-based transitions over scattered RMW callbacks | Accepted | — |
| ADR-1787 | /gsd:next smart-entry front door delegates advancement to /gsd:progress --next |
Accepted | — |
| ADR-1817 | STATE.md rebuild — derivability contract (capstone transition) | Accepted | — |
| ADR-1820 | Spec-Optional Predicate Rail — the Spec-Section Detection Module, the fallback toggle, and the SPEC↔probe precedence contract | Accepted | — |
| ADR-1866 | agent_skills dual injection — orchestrator-side + agent-side self-load | Accepted | — |
| ADR-1990 | Existing Code Onboarding Module owns deterministic repo-state detection and onboarding route selection | Accepted | — |
| ADR-2008 | Generic gate-predicate evaluator | Accepted | — |
| ADR-2121 | Phase-Identifier Parsing Consolidation | Accepted | — |
| ADR-2143 | Markdown Table Model, Bounded Mutation, and Fail-Loud Consolidation (#1372 part 2) | Accepted | — |
| ADR-2164 | Statusline draws its data boundary at local, read-only sources | Accepted | — |
| ADR-2207 | STATE.md Status lifecycle — phase-completion writes an intermediate state; milestone-close owns termination |
Accepted | — |
| ADR-2346 | Command Dispatch Completion | Accepted | — |
| ADR-2619 | Observability and shareable diagnostics — wire the dispatch seam, add the outbound trust boundary | Accepted | — |
| ADR-2629 | Phase effort is estimated against a calibrated smart-zone budget, not a static heuristic | Accepted | — |
| ADR-2719 | Emitted-artifact attribution — replace the committed parity fixtures with a computed conservation law | Accepted | — |
| ADR-2782 | Reviewer Lane — the cross-AI reviewer handoff becomes a declared capability surface | Accepted | — |
| ADR-2966 | Test the five-step loop as a continuous walk, not isolated points | Accepted | — |
| ADR-3180 | Planning Semantic Model — Single Owner per Derivation | Accepted | — |
| ADR-3212 | The Lexical Seam — Safe Pattern Construction, Line-Terminator Normalization, and Tokenizer-First Stateful Grammars | Accepted | — |
| ADR-3660 | Runtime Artifact Layout Module owns per-runtime artifact placement | Accepted | ADR-1239 |
Proposed (9)
Decided in principle, not yet ratified. Do not cite as settled architecture.
| ADR | Title | Status | Read first |
|---|---|---|---|
| ADR-230 | Introduce next as a long-lived integration branch |
Proposed | — |
| ADR-443 | Unified cross-provider effort controls and fast-mode-aware routing | Proposed | — |
| ADR-612 | Bracket Phase-ID Convention | Proposed | — |
| ADR-660 | Release from the head of next; immutable release tags; @next dist-tag as the RC surface |
Proposed | — |
| ADR-1143 | Claude orchestration capability — Workflow tool (ultracode) as a runtime-gated loop execution backend | Proposed | — |
| ADR-1213 | Capability write side — the Capability State Writer | Proposed | — |
| ADR-1606 | prohibition-enforcement verify-time seam | Proposed | — |
| ADR-1671 | Dynamic context management platform | Proposed | — |
| ADR-3128 | Adaptive runtime evidence for GSD Debug | Proposed | — |
Superseded, Retired, and Legacy (8)
Historical record. Do not follow these — each names what replaced it, or why it was retired.
| ADR | Title | Status | Replaced by |
|---|---|---|---|
| ADR-0005 | SDK Architecture seam map for query/runtime surfaces | Superseded | ADR-0174 |
| ADR-0007 | SDK Package Seam Module owns SDK-to-get-shit-done-redux compatibility | Superseded | ADR-0174 |
| ADR-0010 | File Operation Engine Module owns safe runtime/config file mutations | Superseded | ADR-0009 |
| ADR-0010 | Skill Surface Budget Module owns install-time skill listing curation | Superseded | ADR-0011 |
| ADR-0011 | PRD — review.default_reviewers config key for /gsd-review reviewer selection |
Legacy | — |
| ADR-0012 | CommandRoutingHub as single dispatch seam for CJS command families | Superseded | ADR-0174 |
| ADR-2264 | Redesign golden-install-parity — single-source manifest builder + split invariant | Superseded | ADR-2719 |
| ADR-3524 | CJS↔SDK hard seam — one source of truth per Shared Module | Superseded | ADR-0174 |
74 ADRs. Generated by scripts/gen-adr-index.cjs — run --write after adding or restatusing an ADR.
Seam map
Orientation for the module-ownership ADRs. This section is prose and hand-maintained; the index above is the authority on status.
How GSD meets a host — start at ADR-1239 (EoS). It is the current frame and subsumes the descriptor/projection ADRs (ADR-1016, ADR-58, ADR-3660, ADR-894) as adapters beneath it.
The SDK seam map is gone. ADR-0005 was once the entry point for SDK module ownership; it is superseded by ADR-0174, which retired the @opengsd/gsd-sdk package boundary entirely. There is no sdk/ tree. Read ADR-0174 for the single-runtime collapse; the seam-Module vocabulary survives under one src/.
ADR-0006 documents how query handlers project planning paths (cwd → effectiveRoot → .planning/<project>/...). Cross-reference the Planning Workspace Module (ADR-0004) for workstream pointer policy.
ADR-0008 documents the Installer Migration Module for safe install-time moves, removals, config rewrites, and user-data preservation.
ADR-0009 documents the Shell Command Projection Module seam for runtime-aware projection of installer-owned command text and projection IR. Its Phases 3–4 absorbed the File Operation Engine Module (ADR-0010).
ADR-0011 documents the Skill Surface Budget Module for install-time skill/agent profile staging (--profile=<name>, .gsd-profile marker, requires: closure) and the Phase 2 runtime /gsd:surface command.
ADR-1411 establishes the Resolution Provenance principle: context resolution (config loading, project-root anchoring, workstream resolution) must report its provenance rather than fall open silently to defaults. It is the resolution-side analog of ADR-227 (input-validation shape).