3b18eff388
* test(#3872): failing-first regressions for what a command reports it wrote Pins ADR-3473 §8.7 at the consumer's output. state planned-phase advances current_phase on disk and never reports it, and reports progress.total_plans which reconcileReportedFields silently drops because it cannot resolve a dotted key against nested frontmatter. Both directions of #3818's own before/after diff, reproduced against the real CLI. Also pins the two properties the change must not break: a fully-failed patch still reports an empty updated array, which is what state.cts:607's success boolean depends on; and two content-identical writes differ in last_updated alone. That second one measured state_head NOT to be ambient — it is recomputed every write but only changes when git HEAD moved — so the provenance exclusion is a one-element set, with a companion test pinning that state_head does change when HEAD moves. Refs #3872 * feat(#3872): derive what a command reports from the transaction diff ADR-3473 §8.7. reconcileReportedFields compared the transform's own output against persisted bytes and then filtered what preservation had restored by its FIELD_CLASSIFICATION policy. Both are replaced by one comparison of persisted against the pre-write state the transaction already holds, surfaced to the command through the same caller-allocates out-param idiom divergedFields established. Both of the old directions fall out of that single comparison: a field the transform reported but the pipeline discarded is persisted-equals-snapshot and drops out, and a field nobody reported but the write moved is different and appears. The classification filter is deleted, not relocated — no policy test remains anywhere in the reporting path. Reporting is at dotted-leaf granularity, enumerated from the progress.* rows FIELD_CLASSIFICATION already declares rather than by walking user data to arbitrary depth. That closes a live defect: plannedPhaseCore already pushed progress.total_plans and reconcileReportedFields silently dropped it, because a flat hasOwnProperty cannot resolve a dotted key against nested frontmatter. Current Position was lost the same way and is fixed in the same place. The exclusion is one field, last_updated, and it is by provenance rather than by classification: it is the only field measured to change on every write regardless of content. state_head was measured NOT to qualify — it is recomputed every write but only changes when git HEAD moved. Without that exclusion state.patch's success boolean, which is updated.length > 0, would be permanently true and a fully-failed patch would report success. Refs #3872 * fix(#3872): cover the matrix, and close a prototype-chain read the coverage found Review found 20 of 29 test-matrix rows uncovered. Covering them found two real defects rather than merely documenting the intended behavior. bodyLabelFor read FRONTMATTER_KEY_TO_BODY_LABEL with a bare bracket index on a plain object literal, so a field named __proto__, constructor or toString resolved to the inherited prototype member and leaked a non-string value into the updated array. Fixed with an own-property check, mirroring the discipline resolveFrontmatterPath already had. The security-relevant matrix row proved it before the fix. applyPostSyncPreservation still carried its own inline copy of the value comparison alongside the new stateFieldValuesDiffer, which is two live copies of one rule introduced by the epic that exists to remove them. Routed through the single owner. Adds the fast-check property that a field appears iff its persisted value differs from the snapshot, the string-versus-number representation boundary, dotted paths into missing parents and into scalars, deleted and added keys, and the preserve-if-placeholder pair that proves no classification test survives in the reporting path. Refs #3872 * docs(#3872): document the transaction diff on the write path The updated array's contract belongs where the write path is described. States the iff rule, leaf granularity, the single provenance exclusion and why state_head is deliberately not one, and closes with the consequence a reader actually needs: these arrays are longer than they used to be, because they used to under-report. Refs #3872 * fix(#3872): a derived leaf materializing is not a change the caller made The remote matrix caught 17 failures with two causes. The substantive one is that progress is source: disk, and the disk cannot change during a STATE.md write — the write only touches STATE.md. So a progress block appearing where the snapshot had none is the scanner populating a document that had never been synced. The bytes moved; nothing the caller did moved them. That is the same shape as last_updated one level up, so the provenance rule is generalized rather than special-cased: a field appears iff its persisted value changed for a reason attributable to this write's action, and two cases are not attributable — a field stamped unconditionally on every save, and a declared derived leaf materializing from a source that did not change. Crucially this does not consult the preservation policy, so the filter §8.7 deleted stays deleted; it uses the declared leaf set to know which keys are derived. This had a second production consumer the earlier review concluded did not exist: cmdStatePlannedPhase gates publishStateContract on updated.length, and its own inline comment predicts exactly this failure. A no-op call was publishing state.json. advancePlanNoOpDoesNotPublish genuinely encoded pre-§8.7 behavior and moves. E2 and E6 had carved out total_plans as reportable-on-materialization, an error introduced earlier on this branch rather than a pre-existing pin, and are corrected with it. Refs #3872 * chore(#3872): backfill changeset PR number --------- 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 - State a failing direction — say what output constitutes failure for an
<automated>verify command, and migrate a phase planned before the rule - 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"
- Diagnose which gsd-tools is running — tell this package's tool apart from the predecessor's colliding binary and from a gsd-core too old to identify itself
- 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" - Consume the state contract — read
.planning/state.jsonfrom a workbench or editor extension, gate on the contract version, and tell "nothing to show" 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
- Enable parallel reviewer lanes — cut a multi-reviewer
/gsd-reviewpass toward its slowest lane, and tell a rate-limited lane apart from one that was never selected - 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