All five were found by checking content-model.md against the parser rather than by any gate, which is the point: verify.sh catches a dangling path and a missing ADR number, never a sentence that is merely untrue. The Scaffolding section documented `khosra demo <empty dir>` writing a generated site. ADR-0051 deleted that generator eleven commits ago in favour of the tracked site in examples/, so the paragraph described a subcommand main.go never dispatched — and justified itself with "nothing in the engine repository is content", which the committed demo site contradicts. Deleted rather than rewritten: what the demo is belongs to state.md's inventory, and restating it here would have broken the single-source rule to fix a smaller problem. ADR-0050 is where that claim originated and it still read "Status: accepted", so a reader arriving there had no way to learn the generator was gone. Its Status line now names ADR-0051 as superseding that half. This deviates from decisions.md being append-only, so the exception is recorded in the mutability column where the convention lives: a Status line may be annotated in place, the Decision text never. "The parser does not read `slug` yet" was false and contradicted by the frontmatter table twelve lines above it in the same file. Deleted. The Sequences section and the Sequence doc comment both said `draft` is not honoured "because no bundle carries it yet". Two errors: the demo site carries one, and draft is honoured — membership resolves through Lookup, which is the single place ADR-0024 hides unpublished bundles. The doc now says what actually happens, including that prev/next closes over the gap. state.md said draft "lands in Extra unread". It is lifted to Bundle.Draft and deleted from Extra, and content_test.go already asserted it. Evidence: a three-chapter series with a draft middle, served by a freshly built binary. The landing lists First Rain and Third Rain; chapter one's next points at three/, not two/; the draft's own URL is 404. That absence has no test, so it is now a latent item with the reason it is safe by construction. 6 files, +25/-25. No counter moves. surface.md regenerated: the comment gained a line and shifted ten declaration numbers. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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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. One exception: a superseded entry's Status line is annotated in place to name what replaced it, because a reader arriving at the older entry has no other way to learn it was replaced. Never the Decision text — that stands as history |
roadmap.md |
Arcs, earn-triggers, the core freeze point | When an arc completes |
content-model.md |
On-disk layout, frontmatter, post types, permalinks — what the parser accepts today, never a plan | 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 |
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 exploration.md — the catalog of engine features nobody has asked
for yet) 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 | ideas/exploration.md + roadmap.md |
| what to build next | the harness first (CLAUDE.md §1 read order) and git log for what landed, then .scratch/continue.md for the continuation point and roadmap.md for the arc. The handoff is temporary and ungated: check anything it calls pending with git log -- <the path it names> before planning from it |
| 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 planned item completed | after the commit lands, delete it from .scratch/continue.md and note anything learned that changes a later one. Never during Document: a handoff written mid-change describes the plan, and an amend moves the commit under it — which is how one was written at 01:06 saying a trim awaited a yes that the 01:12 commit had already done |
| Arc finished | roadmap.md + a retro line in state.md |
| Catalog item accepted or rejected | verdict line in ideas/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.