6f0e5ccf85
The RED checkpoint and two orthogonal reviews found eight defects. All fixed here.
THE COLLAPSE THAT WAS WRONG — installer-migrations. Routing ensureInsideConfig's
containment decision through the realpath-based canonical predicate broke four
tests, and the failure message says it plainly: "migration path escapes
configDir: extensions/gsd.cjs". That module's entire contract is that a
symlinked managed path is snapshotted, restored and backed up AS A LINK and
never dereferenced. The canonical predicate dereferences, then rejects the
result for escaping configDir — so it destroys exactly the thing the module
exists to preserve. Reverted to lexical, with the ruling recorded above the
function so it is not collapsed a third time. normalizeRelPath is the real
pre-gate there; it throws on absolute paths and '..' before this check runs.
That makes THREE deliberately-retained implementations, not two, and they share
one shape worth naming: a realpath-based predicate is the wrong tool wherever a
symlink must be PRESERVED rather than resolved. CONTEXT.md and
docs/explanation/security-model.md are corrected — both previously described
ensureInsideConfig as collapsed.
THE MISSED CONSUMER. tests/security-prompt-injection.security.test.cjs
destructures validatePath from the compiled lib; un-exporting it turned five
tests into TypeError. It appeared in my own earlier search output and I did not
follow it up. Translated under the same rule as the rest: assertions on the
rejection REASON go through assertWithinRoot, boolean-only through
tryWithinRoot.
VALIDATE-ONE-PATH-USE-ANOTHER, FOUND TWICE MORE. This is the fourth and fifth
occurrence in this epic of the exact defect it exists to prevent.
- scripts/check-glossary-refs.cjs decided containment on `token` and then
stat'd a separately re-joined path.join(ROOT, token). The ContainedPath is
now carried through to the probe, so the validated value is the probed one.
- src/init.cts computed skillPathContained and DISCARDED it, re-joining from
the raw input for the existsSync and read. The branded type exists to make
that a type error and here it was inert.
AND THE OVER-CORRECTION OF THAT FIX, caught before it shipped. The first attempt
also substituted the validated value into the EMITTED `ref` for a global skill.
That value is a display token, not a path anything reads through — the only fs
access in that branch runs on the lexical path beforehand — so substituting it
changed emitted output two ways: it is realpath-resolved, so a symlinked global
skills directory would have emitted its resolved target instead of the user's
own path, and it came from path.join, so Windows would have emitted a backslash
where the template has a literal '/'. Restored, with the distinction recorded:
the containment check there is a GATE, not a path producer.
A TEST THAT COULD NOT FAIL. The first symlink regression planted its symlink
from inside a hooked fs.readdirSync and never asserted the planting happened —
if the hook did not fire, the "nothing was written outside" assertion passed
trivially, green against vulnerable code. It now asserts the plant, matching its
sibling. The other two were re-checked: one already asserted its equivalent, the
other plants synchronously and cannot silently no-op.
THE SYMLINK FIX ITSELF, now that the tests are proven red on the matrix.
isPathConfined is lexical by design and structurally cannot see a symlink; three
callers relied on it with no defense of their own. install-engine.cts:1608 and
install-profiles.cts:880 refuse to mkdir/write through a link — mkdirSync with
recursive:true does NOT throw on an existing symlink-to-directory, so a planted
link redirected the SKILL.md write outside the install root.
install-profiles.cts:755 refuses to read through one — statSync FOLLOWS links,
so an outside file's contents were returned and installed as a skill body. Each
mirrors the guard retired-artifact-cleanup.cts:77 already uses.
Severity stated accurately rather than dramatically: only the read at :755 needs
no race. _removeGsdEntries sweeps a pre-planted link at :1608 before the write
loop, and :880's stageDir is a fresh mkdtemp, so both of those require winning a
window. They are fixed as defense-in-depth, not as live exploits.
ALSO: the Changed changeset claimed "every command's observable behavior [is]
unchanged". Three rejection messages are reworded. It now says so, and says that
none of them reveals a host path it previously hid. A stale comment in
verify.cts still named validatePath; an init.cts warning hardcoded "resolves
outside the project directory" for a check that also rejects absolute paths, NUL
bytes and empty strings; and the rationale deleted with check-glossary-refs'
retired helper is restored, noting honestly that a rejected token is now
realpath-resolved before rejection rather than rejected by string comparison.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
GSD Core
Git. Ship. Done.
English · Português · 简体中文 · 日本語 · 한국어
A light-weight meta-prompting, context engineering, and spec-driven development system for Claude Code, OpenCode, Antigravity CLI, Kimi CLI, Kilo, Codex, Copilot, Cursor, Windsurf, and more.
What is GSD Core
GSD Core is a context-engineering and spec-driven development framework that drives AI coding agents (Claude Code, Codex, Antigravity CLI, Kimi CLI, Copilot, Cursor, and more) through a disciplined phase loop. It solves context rot — the quality degradation that accumulates as an AI fills its context window — by running all heavy research, planning, and execution work in fresh-context subagents while keeping your main session lean.
How it works
Each milestone repeats the same five-step loop, one phase at a time:
- Discuss — capture implementation decisions before anything is planned
- Plan — research, decompose, and verify the plan fits a fresh context window
- Execute — run plans in parallel waves; each executor starts with a clean 200k-token context
- Verify — walk through what was built; diagnose and fix before declaring done
- Ship — create the PR, archive the phase, repeat for the next one
Quickstart
npx @opengsd/gsd-core@latest
The installer prompts for your runtime (Claude Code, OpenCode, Antigravity CLI, Kimi CLI, Kilo, Codex, Copilot, Cursor, Windsurf, and more) and whether to install globally or locally. The installer is required for cross-runtime compatibility — do not copy files from agents/ or commands/ directly.
On another runtime or without Node.js? See Install on your runtime.
Once installed, start a new project or onboard an existing repo:
/gsd-new-project # greenfield project
/gsd-onboard # existing codebase
New here? Follow Your first project for a guided walkthrough from install to first shipped phase, or Onboarding an existing codebase for brownfield setup.
Documentation
What's new in 1.7.0 → docs/whats-new-1.7.0.md
Tutorials — learning by doing:
How-to guides — task-focused recipes:
Reference — authoritative facts:
Explanation — concepts and design decisions:
Full index: docs/README.md. Other languages: 日本語 · 한국어 · Português · 简体中文.
Why it works
Most AI-coding setups fail at scale because context bloat silently degrades output quality, there is no shared memory between sessions, and nothing verifies that code actually works. GSD Core solves all three: heavy work runs in fresh subagents, structured artifacts like STATE.md and CONTEXT.md survive session boundaries, and the verify step walks through what was built and generates fix plans before a phase is declared done. See docs/explanation/context-engineering.md for the full reasoning.
Troubleshooting? See docs/how-to/recover-and-troubleshoot.md.
Community
| Project | Platform |
|---|---|
| gsd-opencode | Original OpenCode port |
| Discord | Community support |
Star History
License
MIT License. See LICENSE for details.
Claude Code is powerful. GSD Core makes it reliable.