Specs

Each file here describes one functional area of the product — what it does, where it lives in the code, the contract it must honour, and its known gaps. They are modelled on the way a game's specs describe its battle, magic, and inventory systems: a faithful description of the intended behaviour that the build loop reconciles the code against.

Filenames are topics, not ordered identifiers — there are no number prefixes, because numbering implies a priority the specs don't have. Priority lives in ../IMPLEMENTATION_PLAN.md.

Separate from the RFCs

These specs are not RFCs. The RFCs in ../../../docs/rfcs/ are the normative governance layer ("the constitution"); the loop respects them as constraints but never reads or edits them. Specs are the functional description of the actual codebase. A spec may cite a principle as a constraint; it never restates one and never lives in docs/rfcs/.

The specs

Start with overview.md, then:

• Modes: triage-mode.md, mentoring-mode.md, drafting-mode.md, pairing-mode.md.
• Cross-cutting: security-issue-lifecycle.md, release-management-lifecycle.md, privacy-llm-gate.md, agent-isolation-sandbox.md, cve-tooling.md, adoption-and-setup.md, adapters.md, project-agnosticism.md, meta-and-quality-tooling.md, spec-loop-runner.md, security-reporting.md, reviewer-routing.md, skill-reconciler.md.

(Agentic Autonomous, the fifth MISSION mode, is deliberately off and has no spec — see the note in overview.md.)

Spec format

Frontmatter:

---
title: <functional area>
status: experimental   # stable | experimental | proposed | off
kind: feature          # feature | fix | docs | chore
mode: Triage           # Triage | Mentoring | Drafting | Pairing | infra
source: <MISSION.md clause / code paths this area is grounded in>
acceptance:
  - <verifiable criterion>
---

Body sections: What it does, Where it lives, Behaviour & contract, Out of scope, Acceptance criteria, Validation, and (optional) Known gaps — the gaps are what the loop's plan pass turns into work items.

Status mirrors docs/modes.md: stable, experimental, proposed (designed in MISSION, no code yet), off (deliberately not built).

Adding a spec

1. Name the file for its topic (no number prefix).
2. Fill in the frontmatter and the body sections above.
3. Keep Acceptance criteria and Validation objective — they are the loop's backpressure.