msd-core/docs/reference/capability-manifest.md

Capability Manifest Reference (capability.json)

Canonical ADRs: ADR-1244 · ADR-894 · ADR-1016 See also: How to develop a capability · Capability Command Reference

Each capability is a folder capabilities/<id>/ (or an overlay root ~/.gsd/capabilities/<id>/ / .gsd/capabilities/<id>/) containing one capability.json declaration. The file is schema-validated JSON with a common envelope plus a role-typed body (role: "feature", role: "runtime", or role: "reviewer").

---

Envelope fields

These fields are present for role: "feature", role: "runtime", and role: "reviewer" capabilities.

Field	Type	Required	Description
id	string (kebab-case)	Yes	Unique identifier; must equal the folder name. The prefix gsd-, gsd-core-, and anthropic- are reserved for first-party use.
role	"feature" | "runtime" | "reviewer"	Yes	Discriminator that selects the body schema. "reviewer" is for lane-only capabilities that ship a reviewer body and nothing else — see Reviewer body below.
version	semver string	Yes (1.6.0+)	Semantic version of this capability. The registry rejects a manifest without one.
title	string	Yes	Short human-readable label. Must be a non-empty string.
description	string	Yes	Longer summary sentence. Must be a non-empty string.
tier	"core" | "standard" | "full"	Yes	Source of truth for install-profile membership and surface cluster assignment. tier propagates via the requires-closure; install profiles are generated from it.
requires	string[]	Yes	Capability id values this capability depends on. Must be present as an array (use [] when there are no dependencies). Each entry must exist in the registry, be acyclic, and be tier-monotone (a core capability may not require a standard or full capability; a standard capability may not require a full capability).
engines	object	No	Host-compatibility constraint. Sub-field: gsd — semver range string (e.g. ">=1.6.0 <3.0.0"). Acts as a hard gate at install and at load; a mismatch blocks installation and causes the overlay to be skipped with a warning at load time.
runtimeCompat	object	Yes (role: "feature")	Declares which host runtimes this capability can surface through. Validated for every role: "feature" capability (a feature manifest without it fails validation). Sub-fields: supported — a non-empty array of kebab-case runtime ids, or the single wildcard ["*"] for a runtime-agnostic capability; unsupported — an array of kebab-case runtime ids (the wildcard is not permitted here); notes — optional object mapping a runtime id (or "*") to a non-empty explanatory string. The wildcard "*" may not be mixed with concrete ids in the same array, and the reserved names __proto__/constructor/prototype are rejected.
compatVersions	object	No	Graceful-downgrade table mapping "<capVersion>" to "<min gsd version>". Only meaningful for sources that enumerate versions (git tags, registry, npm); a bare tarball URL carries one version and simply blocks on incompatibility.
integrity	string	No	sha512-<base64> hash of the capability bundle. Verified before extraction when present; mismatch aborts install.
provenance	object	No	{ sourceRepo: string, commit: string }. Emitted in CI for first-party and curated capabilities.
author	object	No	{ name: string, email?: string, url?: string }.
homepage	string	No	URL.
repository	string	No	URL.
license	string	No	SPDX licence identifier (e.g. "MIT").
keywords	string[]	No	Arbitrary search tags.

---

Feature body (role: "feature")

Feature capabilities declare owned artefacts, lifecycle hooks, a federated configuration slice, and loop extension registrations.

skills and agents

Sub-field	Type	Description
skills	string[]	Owned skill stems. Exactly one capability may own each stem across the entire merged registry (first-party ∪ overlay).
agents	string[]	Owned agent stems. Same uniqueness constraint as skills.

The skills stems declared here are disclosed by name as instruction surfaces in the pre-install consent summary (ADR-2363). Bodies are installed verbatim and are not content-scanned — see the capability trust model.

agents are classified as an instruction surface too (ADR-2363 D3), but the stems declared here are not disclosed at the prompt: a third-party capability's agents[] are never staged into the agent's instruction context — the staging path that unions third-party skills into a runtime's skills directory has no equivalent for agents — so naming them would claim a surface that does not exist. This does not make agents safe or inert; it means the mechanism does not yet reach them.

hooks

Non-loop lifecycle hooks.

Sub-field	Type	Description
event	string	Hook event name (host-runtime specific).
script	string	Path to the hook script, relative to the capability root. The hook command written into the host settings is the realpath-confined absolute path to this script (so it always runs the bundle's own file regardless of the working directory) and is POSIX single-quoted (so an install prefix containing spaces cannot break it). For shell safety the path must contain only [A-Za-z0-9._/-] — no whitespace, no shell metacharacters (; | & $ ` ( ) < > * ? [ ] { } ! ~ # ' " \ newline), no leading -, no absolute path, and no .. segment. A script outside this allowlist fails validation and the capability is rejected.

config — federated config-key schema slice

The config field is an object whose keys are federated configuration keys contributed by this capability. Each key must be absent from the central config-schema and absent from every other capability's config object (collision fails the build gate). Each entry has the following shape:

Property	Type	Description
type	"boolean" | "string" | "number" | "enum"	Value type.
default	(type-consistent)	Default value; must be consistent with type.
description	string	Human-readable explanation of the key's effect.
values	string[]	enum only. Exhaustive list of permitted string values.

steps

Steps run at a loop extension point as independent units. Ordering within a point is derived from produces/consumes (topological sort; capability-id is the tiebreak).

Sub-field	Type	Required	Description
point	string	Yes	One of the 12 valid loop extension point identifiers (see table below).
ref	object	Yes	The dispatch target. Exactly one of { "skill": "<stem>" }, { "agent": "<stem>" }, or { "command": "<name>" } (the three are mutually exclusive). A skill/agent stem must be declared in this capability's skills/agents array.
produces	string[]	Yes	Artefact names this step produces. Must be present as an array (use [] when it produces none); an omitted produces fails validation. No two capability steps may produce the same artefact at the same point.
consumes	string[]	Yes	Artefact names this step consumes. Must be present as an array (use [] when it consumes none); an omitted consumes fails validation.
onError	"skip" | "halt"	Yes	Behaviour on failure; must be present and one of "skip" or "halt" (an omitted onError fails validation). Steps are purely additive — they never halt or redirect the host workflow on their own; a blocking precondition is expressed as a gate.
when	string	No	Dotted config key; the step is active only when the key is truthy. Evaluated deterministically at render time; phase-context applicability is the skill's own responsibility.
fragment	object	No	Optional inline-or-file prompt fragment attached to the step, with the same { "path": "<relative path>" } or { "inline": "<string>" } semantics as a contribution's fragment. A path is materialised (read and inlined) at load time, resolved against the capability directory and confined to it (.. traversal is rejected).

contributions

Contributions inject a fragment into a named agent role's prompt at a loop extension point. Multiple contributions into the same agent role render as ordered labelled blocks (<contribution from="<id>">…</contribution>).

Sub-field	Type	Required	Description
point	string	Yes	One of the 12 valid loop extension point identifiers.
into	string	Yes	Agent role name. Must be a role published by that loop extension point in the host contract.
produces	string[]	Yes	Artefact names this contribution produces. Use [] when it produces none.
consumes	string[]	Yes	Artefact names this contribution reads. Use [] when it reads none.
fragment	object	Yes	Either { "path": "<relative path>" } (file content) or { "inline": "<string>" } (literal text).
when	string	No	Dotted config key; activates the contribution conditionally.
onError	"skip" | "halt"	No	Behaviour on failure.

gates

Gates check a condition at a loop extension point and optionally block progression.

Sub-field	Type	Required	Description
point	string	Yes	One of the 12 valid loop extension point identifiers.
check	object	Yes	One of three forms (see table below). Must be present as an object; an omitted check fails validation.
blocking	boolean	Yes	Must be present and a boolean; an omitted blocking fails validation. When true, a failed check halts the loop at this point.
onError	"skip" | "halt"	Yes	Behaviour when the check itself errors; must be present and one of "skip" or "halt" (an omitted onError fails validation).
when	string	No	Dotted config key; activates the gate conditionally.

check forms:

Form	Shape	Blocking permitted	Notes
Query	{ "query": "<gsd_run query>" }	Yes	Deterministic first-party code.
Predicate	{ "predicate": { "kind": "artifact-exists" | "config-equals" | …, … } }	Yes	Declarative; no code path.
Agent verdict	{ "agentVerdict": { "ref": …, "prompt": … } }	No (forced advisory)	LLM evaluation; non-deterministic checks may not halt the loop.

---

Valid point values

The 12 loop extension points are a closed, additive-only vocabulary. Every steps, contributions, and gates entry must use one of these identifiers exactly.

Point	Phase	Position
discuss:pre	Discuss	Before the discuss step executes
discuss:post	Discuss	After the discuss step completes
plan:pre	Plan	Before the plan step executes
plan:post	Plan	After the plan step completes
execute:pre	Execute	Before the execute phase begins
execute:wave:pre	Execute	Before each execution wave
execute:wave:post	Execute	After each execution wave
execute:post	Execute	After the execute phase completes
verify:pre	Verify	Before the verify step executes
verify:post	Verify	After the verify step completes
ship:pre	Ship	Before the ship step executes
ship:post	Ship	After the ship step completes

---

Runtime body (role: "runtime")

Runtime capabilities describe how GSD projects its artefacts onto one host CLI. The body is a closed 8-axis (plus 4 install-surface) vocabulary; no feature-only fields (skills, agents, steps, contributions, gates, hooks) are permitted. Full semantic specifications, the closed enum values for each axis, and the 16-runtime worked examples are in ADR-1016.

Axis	Field	Type summary
Config home	runtime.configHome	Structured object with kind (dot-home | dot-home-nested | xdg | generic-agents-root), name, optional parent, env[], probe[], probeExists, skillsHome. probeExists is an optional sub-path applied to probe candidates: for generic-agents-root it is a hard filter (a candidate qualifies only if <candidate>/<probeExists> exists); for dot-home-nested it is a preference that makes probing pick the candidate GSD owns (e.g. gsd-core/VERSION) over a bare-existing sibling before falling back — see ADR-1016 and #213/#217.
Local config dir	runtime.localConfigDir	Required dot-prefixed string. The runtime's local content-rewrite directory — the ./ target GSD stamps into rewritten artefact bodies (e.g. ./.claude/ → ./<localConfigDir>/) and the local install dir basename. Backs getDirName() (registry-derived, #1679). Usually .<runtime> (the runtime's home dot-dir), but three runtimes diverge because they read GSD's content from a non-home directory: copilot → .github (GitHub Copilot reads custom instructions from .github/copilot-instructions.md / .github/instructions/; see convertClaudeToCopilotContent rewrites in src/runtime-artifact-conversion.cts), antigravity → .agents (local agent/workflow dir; see the antigravity rewrites in src/runtime-artifact-conversion.cts), kimi → .kimi-code. Distinct from configHome.name (the global install home, which for these three is .copilot / antigravity / agents). Byte-parity-proven against the prior hand-maintained mapping by the golden-install-parity harness.
Config format	runtime.configFormat	Closed enum: settings-json | toml | markdown | markdown-dir | none.
Artefact layout	runtime.artifactLayout	Object with global and local arrays of ArtifactKind (kind, destSubpath, prefix, nesting, recursive, stage).
Command style	runtime.commandStyle	Closed enum: slash-hyphen | shell-var.
Hooks surface	runtime.hooksSurface	Closed enum: settings-json | codex-hooks-json | cursor-hooks-json | copilot-inline | cline-rules | kimi-hooks-toml | none.
Sandbox tier	runtime.sandboxTier	Closed enum: none | codex-agent-sandbox.
Support tier	runtime.supportTier	Integer: 1 (fully tested first-party) | 2 (shipped, lower coverage).
Install surface	runtime.installSurface	Closed enum: settings-json | codex-toml | copilot-instructions | cline-rules | cursor-hooks-json | profile-marker-only.
Shared settings	runtime.writesSharedSettings	boolean. Whether the runtime writes a shared settings.json.
Permission writer	runtime.permissionWriter	null | "opencode" | "kilo" | "antigravity". The finish-time permissions-sidecar writer.
Extended hook events	runtime.extendedHookEvents	string[] over a closed vocabulary: SubagentStop, Stop, PreCompact, FileChanged, BeforeAgent, AfterAgent, BeforeModel, SubagentStart.

hostBehaviors

runtime.hostBehaviors is a closed vocabulary of per-host behavior switches consumed directly by installer and runtime-adaptation code. A key outside the vocabulary is ignored, with a non-fatal warning naming the capability and the key; it is never a validation error, so a manifest authored against a newer GSD degrades visibly instead of failing the build of a repo that merely reads it.

Adding a key is a reviewed first-party change, which is ADR-1016's intended friction rather than an obstacle: the runtime descriptor expresses every per-host difference as a value over a closed vocabulary, and a host needing a new shape gets a named primitive rather than an open escape hatch.

History. hostBehaviors went unvalidated until #2801, and this page previously described it as a deliberate open seam sanctioned by ADR-1016. That attribution was wrong — ADR-1016 does not mention hostBehaviors at all. See the ADR-1016 amendment.

The vocabulary holds 59 keys; 39 of them are set by exactly one capability. This table is not exhaustive — it lists the keys with the widest reuse so a reader can pattern-match new ones against the same shape:

Key	Capabilities declaring it
reapplyCommand	9
skipSharedHooksInstall	8
frontmatterDialect	5
hyphenNameAgentBody	3
legacyCommandsGsdInstallMigration	3
legacyCommandsGsdUninstall	3
nativePlugin	3
skipUpdateBannerCommand	3
verificationStyle	3

reviewerCli has been removed. It was a boolean that marked a runtime capability as also being a reviewer lane. ADR-2782 replaced it with the reviewer body; it survived one release (1.9.0 → 1.10.0) as a derived legacy alias and was deleted in Phase 7 (#2801). No shipped capability declares it.

If your out-of-tree manifest still sets it: nothing crashes and nothing else about your capability changes — it simply contributes no reviewer lane, and the registry reports a non-fatal warning naming the capability. The warning reaches you at build time on stderr, and at install time through the overlay loader's diagnostics. To restore the lane, declare a reviewer body; Ship a reviewer lane in your capability is the migration path, and the field reference is below.

See ADR-1016 (the runtime descriptor is a closed vocabulary; its 2026-08-09 amendment closes hostBehaviors too) and ADR-2782 (introduces the reviewer body, and D9 retires the reviewerCli alias).

For a minimal role: "runtime" example, see ADR-1016 §Decision 8.

---

Reviewer body (role: "reviewer", or on any role)

ADR-2782 introduces the reviewer lane: one external CLI or model endpoint that /gsd-review hands a plan to for independent review.

To declare one, follow Ship a reviewer lane in your capability. This section is the field reference behind that guide.

The reviewer body is optional and absent-safe at every layer. A capability with no reviewer body is simply not a lane — that is never a validation error. This is a normative forward/backward-compatibility invariant, not a nicety: a plugin, a runtime, or a future GSD version may omit reviewer entirely with no consequence.

The shape is hybrid:

• A reviewer body is admissible on role: "runtime", so an existing runtime capability — codex, antigravity — keeps one manifest that is both an installable runtime and a reviewer lane.
• A third role, role: "reviewer", exists for lane-only CLIs that GSD never installs into. There are currently 5: coderabbit, gemini, llama-cpp, lm-studio, ollama.

Current role counts across capabilities/: feature 20, runtime 19, reviewer 5.

All 12 shipped lane declarations carry all 13 fields below.

Field	Type	Notes
slug	string	Lane identity; grammar ^[a-z0-9][a-z0-9_-]*$. May use _ (lm_studio, llama_cpp) even where the capability folder id is kebab-case (lm-studio).
flags	string[]	User-facing CLI flags that select this lane. A lane may declare more than one — antigravity declares --antigravity and --agy. 12 lanes declare 13 flags in total.
transport	closed enum	spawn | openai-http.
probe	object	Availability check. probe.kind is a closed enum: command-exists | command-capability | http-reachable. command-capability additionally takes binary, needle, and a required timeoutMs — it exists because a bare binary name can be ambiguous (kimi is claimed by both the Kimi Code CLI and the legacy Python kimi-cli), and the timeout bound is mandatory because an unbounded --help | grep probe is this repo's named Unbounded Subprocesses defect.
invoke	object	Shape is selected by transport. For spawn: binary, args[], promptChannel (stdin | argv | argv-file-ref | none), outputChannel (stdout | file-arg), outputArg (required when outputChannel is file-arg), modelArg (string or null), effortChannel (none | argv | env). For openai-http: hostConfigKey, defaultHost, path, modelDiscovery (none | first-from-models-endpoint), fallbackModel, effortChannel. args supports the {{model}}, {{prompt}}, {{effort}}, and {{output}} placeholders.
timeoutFloorMs	number	Measured per-lane floor. Lane divergence here is real and correct — the descriptor's job is to declare divergence in one place, not to promise uniformity.
emptyOutput	closed enum	stub-with-stderr | handler-owned.
reviewsSection	string	The REVIEWS.md heading this lane renders under. Must be unique across the merged roster.
evidenceClass	closed enum	source-grounded | diff-only (diff-only findings are down-weighted in consensus).
requiresBinaries	string[]	Extra binaries the lane needs beyond invoke.binary.
promptBudgetKey	string or null	Federated config key bounding prompt size.
modelConfigKey	string or null	Federated config key naming the model, e.g. review.models.kimi-code.
handler	closed enum or null	antigravity | openai-compatible | opencode | null.

handler is a closed enum of first-party handler names, not an open escape hatch. ADR-1016 explicitly rejected "arbitrary code in the descriptor"; hard shapes are absorbed by adding a named primitive that is reviewed first-party. The consequence, stated plainly: a third-party reviewer lane is strictly data-only. A plugin can ship a lane, but not a quirky lane that needs imperative code — a lane requiring behavior beyond the closed handler set is not expressible and must be proposed and merged first-party.

Uniqueness is enforced across the merged first-party ∪ overlay set: duplicate slug, duplicate flags entry, and duplicate reviewsSection are each build-time violations. Two lanes sharing a reviewsSection heading would silently merge their output in REVIEWS.md, producing apparent consensus that does not exist.

An unknown field inside a reviewer body is a non-fatal warning on stderr, never a build failure (ADR-2782 D4), so a manifest built against a newer GSD degrades visibly rather than crashing.

Example — lane-only role: "reviewer" capability

{
  "id": "coderabbit",
  "role": "reviewer",
  "version": "1.8.0",
  "title": "CodeRabbit",
  "description": "CodeRabbit CLI — cross-AI /gsd-review reviewer lane only; not a GSD install target (no runtime body, no artifacts).",
  "tier": "full",
  "requires": [],
  "engines": { "gsd": ">=1.8.0" },
  "reviewer": {
    "slug": "coderabbit",
    "flags": ["--coderabbit"],
    "transport": "spawn",
    "probe": { "kind": "command-exists", "binary": "coderabbit" },
    "invoke": {
      "binary": "coderabbit",
      "args": ["review", "--prompt-only"],
      "promptChannel": "none",
      "outputChannel": "stdout",
      "modelArg": null,
      "effortChannel": "none"
    },
    "timeoutFloorMs": 360000,
    "emptyOutput": "stub-with-stderr",
    "reviewsSection": "CodeRabbit",
    "evidenceClass": "diff-only",
    "requiresBinaries": [],
    "promptBudgetKey": null,
    "modelConfigKey": null,
    "handler": null
  }
}

---

Conformance invariants

The following invariants are enforced at build time by scripts/gen-capability-registry.cjs and at install time by the runtime-callable validateCapability() / validateCrossCapability() over the merged first-party ∪ overlay set.

• version is required. The registry rejects any manifest without a semver version field.
• id uniqueness. No two capabilities may share an id. An overlay whose id collides with a first-party id is rejected; first-party always wins.
• Skill and agent stem uniqueness. Exactly one capability may own each skill or agent stem across the entire merged registry.
• requires exist and are acyclic. Every id listed in requires must exist in the registry; the dependency graph must be acyclic.
• requires is tier-monotone. A core capability may not require a standard or full capability. A standard capability may not require a full capability.
• point values are from the closed set. Every point in steps, contributions, and gates must be one of the 12 identifiers above.
• contribution.into is a published agent role. The into value must be an agent role declared by the host contract for that loop extension point.
• Config key exclusivity. A federated config key must be owned by exactly one capability and absent from the central config-schema. Presence in both is a collision; a half-migrated key fails the build gate.
• Artefact production uniqueness per point. No two capability steps may produces the same artefact name at the same loop extension point.
• engines.gsd is a hard gate. A capability whose engines.gsd range does not satisfy the installed GSD version is blocked at install and skipped (with a warning) at load time.
• Path confinement. Declared module paths may not use parent-directory traversal (../); modules are require()'d only from the capability's own install root.
• Reserved namespace. Capability id values beginning with gsd-, gsd-core-, or anthropic- are reserved; third-party capabilities using these prefixes are rejected.

---

Example — complete role: "feature" capability

The following is the canonical UI design-contract capability from ADR-894. It illustrates all major body sections.

{
  "id": "ui",
  "role": "feature",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "title": "UI design contracts",
  "description": "UI-SPEC design contract and retrospective UI audit for frontend phases.",
  "tier": "standard",
  "requires": [],
  "engines": { "gsd": ">=1.6.0" },
  "runtimeCompat": { "supported": ["*"], "unsupported": [] },
  "skills": ["ui-phase", "ui-review"],
  "agents": ["gsd-ui-checker", "gsd-ui-auditor"],
  "hooks": [],
  "config": {
    "workflow.ui_phase": {
      "type": "boolean",
      "default": true,
      "description": "Enable the UI design-contract gate during planning."
    },
    "workflow.ui_review": {
      "type": "boolean",
      "default": true,
      "description": "Enable the retrospective UI audit."
    },
    "workflow.ui_safety_gate": {
      "type": "boolean",
      "default": true,
      "description": "Block execution on unmet UI-SPEC contracts."
    }
  },
  "steps": [
    {
      "point": "plan:pre",
      "ref": { "skill": "ui-phase" },
      "produces": ["UI-SPEC.md"],
      "consumes": ["CONTEXT.md"],
      "when": "workflow.ui_phase",
      "onError": "skip"
    },
    {
      "point": "verify:post",
      "ref": { "skill": "ui-review" },
      "produces": ["UI-REVIEW.md"],
      "consumes": ["UI-SPEC.md"],
      "when": "workflow.ui_review",
      "onError": "skip"
    }
  ],
  "contributions": [],
  "gates": [
    {
      "point": "execute:wave:post",
      "check": { "query": "ui.safety-gate" },
      "when": "workflow.ui_safety_gate",
      "blocking": true,
      "onError": "halt"
    }
  ]
}

Notes on this example:

• when on each hook references its own config key; whether the phase is actually a frontend phase is decided inside ui-phase (self-gate).
• The plan:pre step self-skips on non-frontend phases, producing no UI-SPEC.md; the execute:wave:post gate's ui.safety-gate query passes gracefully when no UI-SPEC.md exists.
• A contribution follows this shape: { "point": "plan:pre", "into": "planner", "produces": [], "consumes": [], "fragment": { "path": "loop/threat-model.md" }, "when": "workflow.security_enforcement" } (produces and consumes are required arrays — use [] when empty).