This is the record of an abcd-managed repository

abcdBetav0.16.2 · 2026-11-06

Development record

Glossary

core29

  • briefstableThe living root document that holds a project's purpose, constraints, and success criteria — always the project's current state, revised in place as the project moves.
  • bundlestableSeveral intents that share one spec because they ship as one change; each member carries kind bundle-member and the bundle's name, and all ship together when the spec closes.
  • construalstableThe statement of what the situation is being treated as, in one or two sentences, held at the top of the brief's framing chapter as the frame a widening reading reads against; one of adr-55's three framing surfaces, beside the committed glossary terms and the committed scope. The ledger context's entry governs the term inside the cold-reading experiment.
  • disembarkstableThe act of packing a lifeboat — `abcd disembark pack <source-repo> <dest>` reads a source repository without writing to it and distils its settled artefacts, decisions, and configuration into a portable lifeboat directory at a destination outside that repository, which a fresh context can later unpack via `/abcd:embark`.
  • intentstableA press-release-shaped description of a feature written before implementation begins, capturing the user problem, proposed solution, and success criteria.
  • ledgerstableAn append-or-move store a command writes and a human reads back, the issue ledger under .abcd/work/issues/ when the word stands bare; inside the cold-reading experiment the word means the warm material and its stores, which the read-block keeps from a reading (the ledger context's entries govern that sense). Four further ledgers share the word and are always named in full.
  • lensdraftOne of nine broad questions the librarian asks around every source (principles and key features, context and timeline, alternatives, evidence and reception, use and best practice, people and sources, rights and media, open questions and glossary, fit to my project), each read for the subject at hand.
  • librariandraftThe engine an agent runs to read the sources a person gives for a subject, search around them along the nine lenses, and record a private reading pack whose every quote matches the text filed for its source.
  • librarydraftThe person's collection of outside material (papers, links and the cited notes drawn from them), each item marked confidential or public when it is added, and consulted on request with every answer citing the item it came from.
  • lifeboatstableA portable directory artefact packed by `/abcd:disembark` that captures the distilled knowledge and configuration of a source project so it can be unpacked into a fresh context by `/abcd:embark`. It always lands outside the source repository, at an operator-chosen destination.
  • loopdraftThe record loop — brief to intent to spec to shipped work to audited verdict and back onto the brief — which shipping closes twice, once by grading the acceptance criteria and once by rewriting the brief passage. Two other loops carry the word and are always qualified: the autonomous-run loop and the lifeboat round-trip.
  • memory-notedraftA short lesson an agent learned while working (a fact about the project, the person or the machine), kept with the words that should recall it and brought back into a session automatically when a prompt matches; kept on the person's machine until promoted into the project's record.
  • milestonesupersededA planned end condition for a stretch of work; retired: the checkpoint is the derived release plus each intent's acceptance criteria.
  • oraclestableAn AI model invoked to review, reason over, or validate a project's artefacts — host-delegated by default, or reached through an opt-in oracle adapter.
  • personastableA placeholder stakeholder character drawn from the abcd personas registry, used in press releases, intents, and design documents to represent a real user archetype without using real names.
  • phasesupersededAn ordered stretch of development work that bundles a set of intents and brief plumbing-phases and ends in a milestone; abcd's sequencing layer, recorded as a document in roadmap/phases/. Unqualified it always carries that sense, the brief's own numbered build milestones being plumbing-phases.
  • planstableThe product thinker's sign-off act `abcd intent plan <itd-N>`, which mints a spec, links both sides and moves a draft intent to planned/. Two further senses share the word, a dated design plan under development/plans/ and a session's planning brief, and each is qualified where it appears.
  • product-thinkerstableThe person who decides what is built and why — who rules on intents, signs off acceptance criteria, adopts or declines a proposal, and owns the decisions no mode automates (adjudication, dependency sign-off, irreversible acts). One of the two people abcd addresses, beside the technical facilitator.
  • reading-packdraftThe private result of one librarian run: ideas, principles, claims and references from the sources, each with its quote, locator, lens, form check and rights, ranked by usefulness to the subject, with the open questions and glossary kept apart.
  • reading-positionstableOne of the four questions a cold reading can be commissioned to answer — widening, entailment, comparative or detection. The position fixes the reading's object, its question and the supply regime its output is validated against; `abcd reading assemble --position` names it.
  • record-familiesstableThe one page that maps abcd's record families (intent, spec, step, bundle, issue, release, status) and how they relate: what each groups, what groups it, its lifecycle and the verb that moves it.
  • recordstableOne identified, filed document that a command mints and a lint gate reads — an itd-N, spc-N, adr-N, iss-N or rdg-id. "The development record" is the whole durable corpus those records make up, and "a record family" is one lifecycle-bucketed set of them; each of the three is qualified where the other two could be read.
  • roadmapsupersededThe sequencing folder .abcd/development/roadmap/, which holds the phase docs and the RFCs. Its README is the roadmap dashboard, a separate sense — a live status render that reads the native spec store and the intent buckets rather than the phase docs.
  • specstableA specced block of work in abcd's native spec store that implements one or more intents, broken into ordered tasks with acceptance criteria.
  • stepstableOne of the ordered, independently landable pieces a spec lists under its Steps section; each step is one lane and one pull request, and a spec with no steps is one step.
  • surfacestableA verb's front door — the markdown command file under commands/ plus the transport package under internal/surface/ that reaches the core. "A surface chapter" is the brief's design record for one such front door, and "a rendered surface" is a public text held to the repository's identity block; both are qualified.
  • technical-facilitatorstableThe person who decides how the work is carried out — who runs the agents and operates the machinery between the product thinker's decisions: the gates, merges, CI, hooks, installs and the mechanics of the record. One of the two people abcd addresses; itd-97 holds that the role is a mode, not a person.
  • transportstableThe mechanism by which curated context and artefacts are packaged and delivered to an oracle for review or reasoning.
  • voyagestableThe operations namespace at `~/.abcd.noindex/voyage/<source-root-sha>/` — an append-only record of what abcd *did* to produce a lifeboat (every disembark and embark run), as against the lifeboat itself, which is what gets carried.

distribution3

  • end-userstableA person who installs and runs published abcd from the repo marketplace — the consumer of a release, distinct from a persona (a modelled archetype used in intents and briefs).
  • releasestableA published, version-tagged snapshot of abcd — the act and the artefact of cutting a curated release from the single repo, carrying a version and a changelog entry.
  • versionstableA strict-SemVer string stamped into the curated release artifact at cut time and carried as the git tag of the single repo, identifying a published snapshot of abcd for install and update. It is an OUTPUT of publishing, derived from the impact of what shipped, and never a unit that sequences the work.

interview3

  • embarkstableThe opening move of a grill session, a design target that does not ship, in which the oracle reads the target intent, identifies the primary ambiguities, and poses the first round of Socratic questions.
  • knowledge-floorstableWhat each of the two people abcd addresses is assumed to know, the measure an explanation in an abcd interview is held to, as against the register, which sets only its tone.
  • sessionstableOne complete interactive exchange between a human and the abcd grill sub-verb, a design target that does not ship, spanning all rounds of Socratic questioning through PRD synthesis for a single intent or brief section.

ledger9

  • admissiondraftThe researcher's act of taking a widening reading's proposed configuration into the candidate set, recorded with grounds, as distinct from declining it.
  • cold-readingdraftA reading of committed artefacts by a disinterested party that has command of established patterns and no investment in the framing, receiving its input only through the assembler and producing items that each name the pattern they apply.
  • construaldraftThe statement of what the situation is being treated as, in one or two sentences, held in the brief's framing chapter as the frame a widening reading reads against.
  • dispositiondraftThe researcher's recorded response to one reading item, written as a separate record keyed to the item, in one of four states: accepted, rejected, declined or held.
  • lapsedraftA recorded point at which the recording discipline was suspended, deferred or evaded, captured as its own category in the issue ledger and timestamped at the lapse rather than at write-up.
  • positiondraftOne of the four places in the loop at which a cold reading is commissioned, each with its own object, question and supply regime: widening, entailment, comparative and detection.
  • read-blockdraftThe wall that keeps ledger content from a cold reading: positive inclusion at the assembler, field projection out of files that hold both cold and warm material, a manifest that enumerates what was passed, and an eval that fails when warm material reaches a reading.
  • regimedraftThe licence a reading holds at its position, naming what it may produce and what the ingest verb refuses or flags: generative, explicative, evaluative or registrative.
  • warmdraftThe researcher's reserved reasoning, and the ledger material it is performed against: frame origination and admission, selection, explanation, the judgement of when to stop, and every record of how a prior tension was raised or settled.