Files
khosra/harness/README.md
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bdeshiandClaude Opus 5 b313b729d9 review 130 feature ideas, and delete the lists that held them
One idea at a time: definition, necessity, priority, layer, recommendation. Every
row is now shipped, scheduled, parked with a trigger, or dropped with a reason —
so both tracking files are gone rather than left as a parallel backlog.

Roughly a third already shipped. A quarter needed only a theme fragment or CSS,
including several the list assumed were features: arbitrary `theme.*` frontmatter
attributes already reach templates through Extra (verified), native lazy loading
already ships and is deliberately absent on lead figures, and in-page timelines
are a theme-defined container.

roadmap.md gains an "Order of work" — nine bodies of work in sequence, because the
sections this review added had accumulated without one. Item 0 is a decision, not
work: core sits at ~2965 of 3000 and logging alone wants the remainder, so
discover.go moves out *and* the ceiling rises with an ADR. feed.go and
web/extras.go cannot move; they are resolver cases, and three parked items now
wait on that same seam decision.

Two ADRs came out of it.

ADR-0083: the dependency rule described a practice it forbade. "Stdlib first,
always" and "usually 40 lines of stdlib" would, read literally, have argued
against all five modules here — every one is a format or algorithm somebody else
specified, and their allowlist comments say so. Surfaced when this agent proposed
hand-rolling Reed–Solomon for QR encoding. The test is now whether you can verify
it, not whether you can write it, with compute-versus-hold as the counterweight.
conventions.md and allowed-deps.txt contradicted it and were realigned.

ADR-0084: the Effect primitive said every Effect is "idempotent and re-runnable
from scratch" — true of derivatives, false of anything outbound, since a sent
message cannot be recalled. Split into artifact-producing and outbound, the latter
idempotent only against a delivery ledger, at-least-once with a dedupe key, and
ledgers in a -state directory distinct from the disposable cache. Asked for as
forward-looking design so webmentions need no redesign; recorded as a shape rather
than built, the way extensions.md records the Extension struct. Also fixed a
STATUS claiming Effects were "not buildable yet" when the derivative pass has
inhabited them since ADR-0042.

Findings that were defects rather than ideas: the Atom feed emits no <author>,
which RFC 4287 requires. HTML comments in content are published verbatim —
verified — so anything commented out is already public, and a check warning is
scheduled rather than the engine deleting authored bytes. `Page` has no Date, so a
theme cannot mark up dt-published or show an article's own date.

A frontmatter naming rule after this agent proposed `archive` alongside the
accepted `archived`: no near-homograph keys, and name the benefit rather than the
vendor.

reference/microformats-and-indieweb.md is new and is the reference asked for —
microformats2 properties and IndieWeb rel values mapped to where a theme puts
them, with spec URLs, marked scheduled. rel="me" is the highest-value lowest-cost
item in that space and needs no endpoint at all.

Four things this agent got wrong and the human caught: asserting "the engine never
fetches" from a sentence scoped to the content repo, twice; inventing a
data-sovereignty argument for an item he had filed as "a cool geeky thing", when
the raw Markdown in his git already is the sovereignty; the archive naming; and
claiming microformats could be fully implemented today.

15 files, +556/-385. No code changed. Nothing was scheduled that this agent could
not name a consumer for.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-03 16:14:52 +06:00

10 KiB

Harness doc map

The docs an agent reads to build the engine. Read the one you need. Do not read them all.

This directory was docs/ until ADR-0082 renamed it: docs/ is reserved for documentation written for whoever uses khosra, which does not exist yet. Everything here is engine- and agent-facing — a specification, a rule, or a record — and none of it is written for an author.

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 harness/ 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
which list owns a piece of pending work four kinds, deliberately not merged: might be builtideas/exploration.md — the catalogue, plus parked and dropped items each with a trigger or a reason · is scheduledroadmap.md, whose "Order of work" says which is next · is broken and known → the Latent list in state.md · waits on an observationideas/deferred-decisions.md "Triggers — the one list". Merging them would flatten four levels of authority and make pending work expensive to ignore, which is the property that keeps ideas/ safe to keep
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
What un-defers a deferred decision the Triggers table in ideas/deferred-decisions.md

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.