* feat(#3906): two terminators over one registry, with a versioned projection Adds terminateNow (write-then-terminate, for callers that cannot wait for the event loop) beside runMain (drain-then-exit), both projecting through one shared function so they cannot disagree - the parity the ADR makes mandatory. A failed write does not change the exit code: letting it propagate would fail a hook open, which is what the fail-closed branches exist to prevent. The projection is versioned. v1 reproduces today's integers, including keeping a payload-carried degraded result at exit 0 - ADR-2980 ratified that across 60 sites and declined normalizing it on measured blast radius. v2 applies the registry. --exit-contract=v2 or GSD_EXIT_CONTRACT=v2 selects it; an unrecognized version throws rather than silently defaulting. The registry is now emitted beside both copies of the exit module, so it resolves as a sibling in the built tree and in the committed scripts/ copy that must load on an unbuilt clone. * fix(#3906): actually restrict code 2 to terminateNow, and generate the registry's type The claim that terminateNow is the only place 2 can be produced was false: runMain's outcome arm applied no guard, so runMain(()=>'HOOK_DENY') set exitCode 2 through the drain path - and the parity matrix demonstrated it while calling it parity. runMain now refuses any outcome projecting to the hook-protocol code, gated on the code rather than the name so an alias cannot slip past, and the matrix asserts the restriction instead of contradicting it. The ambient type for the generated registry was hand-written with no gate against the generator's actual output - the declared-surface-diverges-from-runtime defect class this epic exists to close, reintroduced inside it. It is now a third generated artifact covered by the same --check. Also converts every test-body try/finally to t.after(). * test(#3906): derive the glossary fixture's dependencies instead of hand-listing them Adding a require to scripts/lib/cli-exit.cjs broke 31 tests in one suite that built its fixture from a hand-written dependency list, so the new sibling was absent and the copied script could not load. copyScriptWithDeps walks the require graph and exists for exactly this class - #3412 paid the same bill when one new require broke 82 tests across two suites. Migrating rather than adding another copyFileSync line keeps the class closed. The other nine suites referencing that path were triaged; none copies-and-spawns, so none needed migrating. * fix(#3906): enumerate the new shipped file, drop a vendor name from shipped data, and fix three test defects install: scripts/lib/exit-code-registry.cjs was missing from GSD_SCRIPTS_LIB_FILES, so it shipped to every install and orphaned on uninstall. The registry gave HOOK_DENY a meaning naming one harness, and that string ships into every runtime's tree - a guard correctly caught it leaking into the hermes and qwen installs. The registry is runtime-neutral infrastructure; the vendor name belongs in the ADR, not in shipped data. Two more fixture harnesses built their trees from hand-listed dependencies and broke on the new require; both migrated to the derived helper, and all 23 copy-and-spawn candidates were enumerated so the class is closed rather than patched. One generator test used a fixture code that collided with a real allocation, so the generator correctly reported a duplicate where the test expected drift. The large-payload test embedded a 256KB literal in the child's argv, exceeding Linux's 128KiB MAX_ARG_STRLEN so the child never started - it now builds the payload inside the child. * chore(#3906): backfill changeset pr number * docs(#3906): document the exit-code contract selector P2 is the first phase of this epic with a user-invocable surface, so the flag and env var owe a reference entry. Records what actually differs between v1 and v2 today (one outcome), that an unrecognized value is rejected rather than silently defaulted, and the fail-safe property that makes switching safe. --------- 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
- Change the STATE.md schema — add, change or remove a STATE.md frontmatter key and keep the template and all five reference documents in step
- 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 - Vendor a dependency — add a third-party package
gsd-core/bin/**needs at runtime as a verbatim vendored artifact, keep it out ofdependencies, and pick the right upstream bundle - 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