Files
msd-core/docs/adr
Tom Boucher 8b44a0da43 chore(#2794): single-source the reviewer invocation contract + parity assertion (#2820)
* chore(#2794): single-source the reviewer invocation contract

Phase 1 of epic #2782 (ADR-2782). Introduces one core descriptor table as
the declared contract for all 11 cross-AI reviewer lanes, and the
DEFECT.GENERATIVE-FIX parity assertion the roster has never had.

The lane contract lived in three unrelated surfaces — the roster, ~640
lines of hand-authored per-CLI bash in invoke_reviewers, and the
write_reviews section headings — so cross-cutting fixes landed per-leg
(#2494 and #2605 were the same empty-output defect filed twice).

- src/review-lane-descriptor.cts: frozen table declaring per lane the
  slug, flags, probe, invoke shape, timeout floor, empty-output policy,
  REVIEWS.md section, evidence class, required binaries, prompt-budget
  key and handler. Field names track ADR-2782 D1/D2/D6/D7 verbatim so
  Phase 2 harvests the shape with no translation layer. It declares;
  it does not execute — invoke_reviewers iterates in Phase 5b.
- checkReviewerLaneParity: bidirectional parity across descriptor,
  roster, invoke_reviewers legs and write_reviews sections. Forward-only
  would miss the failure it exists to catch (#2718 added a leg, #2781
  was the drift). ADR-1517 instance headings are exempt per D8.
- Legs carry an explicit <!-- reviewer-lane: slug --> marker; five
  non-lane bold labels share the bold-then-fence shape a heuristic
  matcher would key on.
- ADR-2782 D4: an explicitly-flagged reviewer that cannot run is now an
  error in both the core module and the workflow prose that mirrors it.
  A code-only change would be unobservable — the module has no
  production caller; the workflow narrates the policy. Discovery paths
  (--all, review.default_reviewers) stay lenient.
- Fixes the qwen leg, the last one discarding stderr to /dev/null.

Two ADR-2782 D2 vocabulary widenings were forced by surveying the
shipped legs: promptChannel 'none' (CodeRabbit is fed no prompt) and
outputChannel 'file-arg' (Codex writes via -o and discards stdout,
#1698). Both are additive and closed; Phase 2 owns the validator.

Closes #2690

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

* fix(#2794): make the parity checker total and pin the lane slug grammar

Findings from the orthogonal review passes.

Spec axis — the module claimed its vocabulary tracked ADR-2782 D1/D2
"verbatim" while diverging in three undisclosed ways, which is the
translation layer Phase 2 was supposed to be spared:
- `transport` moves from `invoke.transport` to the LANE level, a sibling
  of `probe`/`invoke`, exactly as D1's manifest example places it. The
  nested form read better as a TS discriminated union; the union is now
  discriminated at the lane level instead, which costs nothing.
- The header and the CONTEXT.md glossary now enumerate all FOUR
  widenings (adding `outputArg` and `flags[]`), not two.

Standards axis — CLAUDE.md requires a fast-check property test for a
parser, and `checkReviewerLaneParity` parses markdown for markers and
headings. Adding one found two real defects that the hand-written
matrix missed:
- NOT TOTAL: a malformed descriptor entry threw on `lane.flags`
  iteration, contradicting the module's own "never throws" claim. Every
  field is now narrowed from `unknown` at the trust boundary and
  reported as MALFORMED_LANE / INVALID_SLUG. This matters because
  Phase 2 feeds this function third-party overlay data, and a parity
  gate that crashes is indistinguishable from one never run.
- SILENT GRAMMAR MISMATCH: LEG_MARKER_RE captures only [a-z0-9_-], so a
  slug outside that class was unmatchable — its marker could be present
  and correct and the scan would still report LEG_MARKER_MISSING
  forever. LANE_SLUG_RE now pins the grammar and a violating slug is
  reported INVALID_SLUG. A loud named violation beats a silent miss.

Generators are document-shaped, not writer-seeded (CONTRIBUTING #2371):
seeding from the module's own matchers could only produce documents
those matchers already recognize.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

* fix(#2794): register the new bin/lib module in the ESLint ignore list

The remote runner caught this; lint:ci did not, because the invariant
lives in the test suite rather than the lint chain:

  tests/repo-invariants.test.cjs
  "each bin/lib/*.cjs is linted xor ignored according to migration state"
  -> tsc-generated bin/lib modules not yet added to ESLint ignore list:
     review-lane-descriptor.cjs

Adding a src/*.cts module ripples to six surfaces (.gitignore, the
ESLint ignore list, docs/INVENTORY-MANIFEST.json, the CONTEXT.md
glossary, the capability/inventory manifests, and any size baseline).
The other five were covered; this was the miss.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

* docs(#2794): amend ADR-2782 D1/D2/D8 with the vocabulary Phase 1 surfaced

Building the Phase 1 descriptor table against all eleven shipped legs is
the first time every lane's contract was written in one place, and it
surfaced four cases the ADR's original survey did not cover. Amending
the design lock rather than diverging from it, so Phase 2 (#2795)
implements the manifest validator against the amended vocabulary instead
of rediscovering the gaps.

All four are additive widenings of closed enums; no decision reverses:

- D2 promptChannel gains `none` — coderabbit is fed no prompt at all, it
  reviews the working-tree diff.
- D2 outputChannel gains `file-arg` — the ADR called a file-writing lane
  a shape a real CLI *could* take; codex already is one, writing via
  -o/--output-last-message and discarding stdout (#1698).
- D2 gains `outputArg`, required iff file-arg — knowing the review lands
  in a file is useless without the argument naming it.
- D1 `flag` becomes `flags[]` and D8's uniqueness flattens across lanes —
  antigravity is selected by both --antigravity and --agy, which a
  single-valued field cannot express.

This is the same evidence path that produced the openai-http transport:
the vocabulary widens on a lane that exists, under review, never on
speculation.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

* chore(#2794): backfill changeset pr number to 2820

---------

Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-29 07:31:32 -04:00
..

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.
  • Proposed means 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 to Accepted, each carrying a dated Ratification section with the evidence (see ADR-857 for the fullest example). The ADRs that remain Proposed are Proposed for 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 stale Proposed.

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-* (and 0174-*) 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 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.

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 becomes Superseded.
  • 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:

  1. The decided mechanism demonstrably exists in the tree — name the files, symbols, and tests.
  2. The owning issue is closed as completed. A closed issue is not proof: stateReason of not planned / duplicate means the decision was dropped (that is Legacy or Retired, not Accepted).
  3. 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.
  4. 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 (53)

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 (command-exit-zero) 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-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-3660 Runtime Artifact Layout Module owns per-runtime artifact placement Accepted ADR-1239

Proposed (8)

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 —

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

69 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).