Claude Opus 5andbdeshi
25d7045133
The cap was arbitrary and the wrong lever: what matters is that a question's answer changes the code, not how many such questions a request happens to carry. A request with six real forks now gets six, batched into one turn — splitting them to look brisk costs the human more than asking once. The instruction to ask is unchanged and still gated by "each with a default so silence answers". The rest is numbers the harness had no business holding. Three kinds, swept across every harness doc, and none of them wanted machinery. Restated values were the real fault: HARNESS.md carried the ceiling figures, which docs/README.md's single-source table says live in scripts/budgets.env and nowhere else. Prose repeating a value is a copy waiting to go stale, which is exactly the rule I was quoting at everything else. The ADRs keep old and new, as an append-only log should; the harness names the concept and points. Illustrative figures — how long verify.sh prints, surface.md against the source, how much the binary grew — drift every commit and carry no decision, so they now say "a line per gate", "an order of magnitude smaller", "roughly a third". Counts that restate their own list are the same fault in miniature: "the three gates people skip", "six commands", "three pieces of it are mechanical", "two sibling folders", "three cases, no fourth". Each is a number that goes wrong the day the list beneath it changes, and none of them was doing any work. Left alone deliberately: values with no other home — the ~50% overrun, the 72-character subject, 40 lines of stdlib over a dependency, toolchain versions. Those are the source, not a copy of one. No gate for this. It would have to guess which four-digit number is a budget rather than a year, an ADR, an HTTP status or a Go version, and a gate that fires on correct prose is a defect.
Doc map
Read the one you need. Do not read them all.
| Doc | Contains | Mutability |
|---|---|---|
architecture.md |
The six primitives, invariants, per-primitive STATUS | Only via an ADR |
state.md |
What exists now: inventory, earn-it counters, latent items | Every feature |
decisions.md |
ADR log — one entry per load-bearing choice | Append-only |
roadmap.md |
Arcs, earn-triggers, the core freeze point | When an arc completes |
content-model.md |
On-disk layout, frontmatter, post types, permalinks | When the disk format changes |
conventions.md |
Go style floor, package layout, perf and test rules | Rarely; via ADR if contested |
extensions.md |
Extension/plugin contract: target shape + earn gates | When earned or frozen |
exploration.md |
Catalog of possible future engine features, leaf/trunk verdicts | When a verdict is reached |
toolchain.md |
Versions and agent-tooling contracts this was built against | When you deliberately move a version |
theme-contract.md |
What the engine promises a theme; the only theme-facing obligation | When the contract is extended — additively only |
context-economy.md |
How the agent spends context: what to read, in what form, and the floor no saving may cross | When a technique or a gate for one changes |
surface.md |
Generated. Every top-level declaration with its line — read before opening source | Never by hand; make surface |
Sibling folders sit outside docs/ because they are storage, not working material:
../ideas/ (parked ideas, any topic) and ../reference/ (durable facts from conversation). Write
there when asked to park something; open a file only when the human names it. Nothing sweeps them.
Topic ownership — read before you assert
The inverse of the refresh triggers: those say what to update after changing code, this says what to read before writing a rule — including when you are only writing an ADR or a comment about it. Nearly always exactly one doc; if two seem to apply, the single-source rule is already broken and that is the finding to report.
| About to assert something about… | Read first |
|---|---|
| plugins, extensions, features-as-packages, stage phases | extensions.md |
| a primitive, an invariant, or what is "earned" | architecture.md + counters in state.md |
| URL paths, permalinks, frontmatter, on-disk layout, post types | content-model.md (+ ADR-0008) |
| Go style, package layout, file/function size, test shape | conventions.md + scripts/budgets.env |
| a dependency | scripts/allowed-deps.txt + ADR-0007 |
| a budget or a gate | scripts/budgets.env + scripts/verify.sh |
| the untrusted boundary, comments, webmentions, form input | ADR-0003 + extensions.md |
| language, translation, fallback | ADR-0004 + ADR-0009 |
| deploy, containers, external services | ADR-0010 |
| whether a future feature is worth building | exploration.md + roadmap.md |
| what to build next | .scratch/build-queue.md if present, otherwise git log and roadmap.md |
| how the harness works — a gate, counter, budget, the loop | HARNESS.md + scripts/verify.sh + CLAUDE.md |
| what one commit contains, and when one happens | conventions.md "Git" (shape) + CLAUDE.md §4 (cadence, ADR-0052) |
| how to read, search, or report without wasting context | context-economy.md (+ ADR-0053) |
| a tool version, or why agent tooling stopped working | toolchain.md |
| templates, layout, presentation, what a theme can rely on | theme-contract.md (+ ADR-0019, ADR-0023) |
Single-source rule
Each fact lives in exactly one doc. Need it elsewhere? Link. This binds ADRs too: an ADR restating a rule an owning doc already carries is a duplicate, not a decision — delete it and amend the owner.
Values that have drifted before, and their one home. Everywhere else names the concept and points here; nothing else may state the value:
| Fact | Sole home |
|---|---|
| Earn-it thresholds (transforms, routes, views, extensions) | the counters table in state.md |
LOC ceilings, size warnings, dependency cap, the CLAUDE.md ceiling |
scripts/budgets.env |
| The permalink path shape | content-model.md (decision recorded in ADR-0008) |
| Which language is at the root, and the prefix form | ADR-0009 |
| The leaf/trunk definition | architecture.md invariant 7 |
| The sovereignty test | roadmap.md Governors |
| Package layout and the forbidden package names | conventions.md |
| What exists in the code right now | state.md inventory |
A value restated in two places is not redundancy for safety; it is a future contradiction waiting for whichever copy gets edited alone.
state.md is the only doc describing the present; the rest describe rules, shapes, or intentions.
When code and state.md disagree, the code wins and state.md is wrong.
Refresh triggers
Update in the Document step of the change that caused them. Not later.
| Change | Update |
|---|---|
| Any code change at all | state.md inventory — in the same commit, which is what verify.sh compares (ADR-0057) |
| New transform, route, view, extension, or dependency | the counters table in state.md |
| A choice expensive to reverse | new ADR in decisions.md |
| A primitive becomes real (earned) | STATUS line in architecture.md + counters |
| New frontmatter field, post type, or path shape | content-model.md |
| New dependency approved | scripts/allowed-deps.txt + ADR |
| Budget raised | scripts/budgets.env + ADR — once the first feature has shipped. While the harness is still being tuned, edit in place. |
| A latent item fixed | remove from the Latent list in state.md |
| A queue entry completed | tick it in .scratch/build-queue.md and note anything learned that changes a later entry — uncommitted, so the commit message carries what landed |
| Arc finished | roadmap.md + a retro line in state.md |
| Catalog item accepted or rejected | verdict line in exploration.md |
CLAUDE.md, scripts/ or .claude/ changed |
HARNESS.md, same change. Enforced by verify.sh. |
| A tool version deliberately moved, or a new external contract relied on | toolchain.md |
| The theme contract extended, or embedded templates changed | theme-contract.md, same change. Enforced by verify.sh. |
| A request spans engine and theme | contract extension here + a written note of the theme's part; never the theme itself |
| A new gate, counter, or budget added | HARNESS.md "Why the pieces exist" + a row in one of these tables |
| A top-level declaration added, renamed or moved | nothing by hand — make surface, which verify.sh then compares |
| A rule, value, name or path changed | grep the repo for the old form; every doc naming the concept, same change |
| The disk contract changed | content-model.md + testdata/ fixtures + a written migration step for the site root, which the engine repo cannot touch |
| A doc or ADR mandates what a change made optional | supersede the ADR; do not reword it in place |
| A request reversed a recorded decision | new ADR, or supersede the old one — the request does not win by being newer |
| A request exceeded a convention on purpose | note the deviation where the convention lives |
| An idea floated, not built now | a file in ../ideas/ + its index line. Adopted later: Status: adopted → <where> |
| A fact worth keeping surfaced in conversation | a file in ../reference/ + its index line, stating how it was established |
Staleness
/refresh-docs reconciles docs against code and reports drift. Run it after a burst of work,
before a new arc, and any time a doc surprises you.
House style
Present tense. Terse. Written for a reader who has forgotten everything, including their own reasoning. No changelog prose, no "recently we…", no preamble. Delete a line before rewriting it. A doc needing a table of contents is too long.
Compression contract
Shortening a harness doc removes words, never instructions. Same rules, gates, thresholds,
triggers and table rows before and after; the agent must act identically. Redundancy between
CLAUDE.md and SKILL.md is deliberate — the constitution is always loaded, the skill is not —
and is not duplication to be collapsed.
Deleting a rule, adding one, or narrowing one is a rule change: it needs its own decision and its own reason, and it never rides along in a compression pass.
Verify before reporting a saving: table rows, headings, list items and checklist boxes must match
the pre-pass file (git diff --stat, or a snapshot if the change is uncommitted). Report word count,
not lines — reflowing prose shrinks lines without saving anything.