The Conformance Check Calls Itself Lint

Press Release

The conformance check calls itself what it is. abcd lint checks a repo against the working conventions — deterministic rules, severities, exit codes — and the word audit goes back to meaning "did we do what we said": /abcd:audit returns to its reserved seat for the hash-chain fidelity checks. "When a verb says lint I know it's checking form — no model, no judgement. When one says audit I know it's checking a promise. I stopped having to remember which one lied," says Bob, staff engineer.

Why This Matters

itd-85 shipped deterministic rule-checking under the one name 02-constraints/04-naming.md reserves for itd-16's formal verification. Per adr-40 the act is a lint, and the maintainer ruled the replacement name abcd lint (2026-08-16, planning question 1): it matches the existing record-lint / docs-lint / lint-reviews family, with abcd docs lint read as the same word at a narrower scope. Clean break, no aliases — pre-1.0.0, --impact breaking drives version derivation, users re-download. About 57 references carry the current name; the scoped sweep is smaller (the word "audit" in its family-2 sense — the intent audit — and third-party senses never move).

Scope Conditions

None stated.

Acceptance Criteria

BDD format, per the itd-1 discipline. Walked and confirmed by the maintainer, 2026-08-16.

• Given the rename, then abcd lint replaces abcd audit with identical behaviour, flags, and the tri-state exit contract, and abcd audit fails as an unknown command — no alias, no shim.
• Given the plugin surface, then commands/lint.md replaces commands/audit.md (/abcd:lint), the 04-surfaces registry row and surface file move, and /abcd:audit stands reserved for itd-16 again — its two 04-naming.md listings intact.
• Given the sweep boundary, then historical and dated records keep the old name; the brief, commands, code, tests, docs/, and rules-loader references move. The scoped patterns are abcd audit, /abcd:audit, and the itd-85 surface's identifiers — never the intent audit or third-party senses of the word.
• Given anything abcd writes into other repos (managed-repo scaffolding, prepare-this-repo instructions), then it emits the new verb, and the breaking CHANGELOG entry names the re-download/re-scaffold step for managed repos.
• Given itd-122's extended surface_coverage armed, then the registry and sub-verb rows move in the same change — record-lint exit 0 proves the migration complete; landing before the check is armed is forbidden.
• Given the task-class tokens, then conformance work carries lint, never audit, and the enum rows in 04-naming.md are re-checked in the same change (adr-40's consequence).
• Given the release record, then the CHANGELOG entry is breaking.

SOTA

Same family as itd-123: pre-1.0.0 breaking rename, no aliases (adr-40; iss-171 precedent). Package ruling after adversarial review (2026-08-16): the conformance code moves to internal/core/repolint — merging the two lint engines was reviewed and deliberately deferred to iss-251, a future consolidation intent, never smuggled into a rename. Chosen path: bespoke sweep, proved complete by the armed itd-122 gate. No new dependency.

Open Questions

None gating. The engine-consolidation question is captured as iss-251.

Audit Notes

Fidelity review — receipt rcp-76175a58e4f7 (verifier abcd:intent-auditor claude-fable-5-1).

Provenance: abcd:intent-auditor@claude-fable-5-1 · rubric_hash sha256:effa65b3e9e88ff29433b443ec2be159522a8b0b71cf1434526514aa61edb13e · prompt_hash sha256:5bcc47af70779fe87bd6cd3824fa540c602728c19033e3bc05c5fa1543f34864 Input attestations: diff:tree at da7b7cf409b41758b3502d3873687dc8b817d8c4 (worktree HEAD; the host supplied no commit range, so the whole tree at that commit is the delivered reality)@-;

Acceptance rollup: MET 5 · MET_WITH_CONCERNS 2 · NOT_MET 0 · INCONCLUSIVE 0

Per-criterion verdicts:

• ac-1 — MET: lint is the registered command, the conformance core states the tri-state exit semantics and the surface tests exercise exit 0, exit 2 and the usage path, and a dedicated test proves audit is an unknown command at exit 2. evidence: internal/surface/cli/cli.go:440 — "Use: "lint"," evidence: internal/core/repolint/repolint.go:9 — "// severity-to-exit-code semantics (0 clean, 1 warnings, 2 any error), and SARIF" evidence: internal/surface/cli/lint_surface_test.go:169 — "func TestAuditRenameCleanBreak(t *testing.T) {" evidence: internal/surface/cli/lint_surface_test.go:55 — "func TestLintConformingExitsZero(t *testing.T) {"
• ac-2 — MET: commands/lint.md exists and commands/audit.md does not, the registry row 16 reads /abcd:lint with its own surface file, and the naming register keeps both /abcd:audit listings as the reserved formal-verification seat. evidence: commands/lint.md:73 — "adding abcd-lint:allow on that line (the earlier abcd-audit:allow spelling is" evidence: .abcd/development/brief/04-surfaces/README.md:31 — "| 16 | /abcd:lint | shipped | Check whether this repo still conforms to the working conventions |" evidence: .abcd/development/brief/02-constraints/04-naming.md:45 — "- /abcd:audit: formal verification surface, staged (itd-16). Reserved, not" evidence: .abcd/development/brief/02-constraints/04-naming.md:72 — "| /abcd:audit | formal verification surface: hash-chain and Merkle audit trails, fidelity checks"
• ac-3 — MET_WITH_CONCERNS: No live surface, brief page, code path or doc still spells the verb abcd audit or /abcd:audit in the conformance sense, the decision log and older changelog sections keep it as history; concern: the privacy waiver token abcd-audit:allow is kept as an honoured legacy spelling by design, a signed-off carve-out from the identifier sweep the changelog names. evidence: internal/surface/cli/lint.go:17 — "// /abcd:audit returns to itd-16's reserved hash-chain fidelity surface): it evaluates the" evidence: internal/core/repolint/rule_privacy.go:61 — "const auditWaiver = "abcd-audit:allow"" evidence: dcn-2608160000000003 — "abcd audit is deterministic rule-checking so it is a lint" evidence: CHANGELOG.md:1112 — "The privacy waiver's current spelling is abcd-lint:allow, and every committed abcd-audit:allow line stays honoured forever."
• ac-4 — MET: The prepare-this-repo page tells the managed repo to run abcd lint, the launch scaffold code carries neither spelling (it writes no conformance step), and the breaking changelog entry names the re-download and re-scaffold step for managed repos. evidence: commands/prepare-this-repo.md:104 — "Write the report — the abcd lint findings plus these supplements — to the" evidence: commands/prepare-this-repo.md:166 — "surfaces render from it. From then on abcd lint reports any surface that" evidence: CHANGELOG.md:1112 — "Managed repos: re-download the binary, and re-run prepare-this-repo/launch scaffold where a repo's own instructions or CI referenced abcd audit."
• ac-5 — MET_WITH_CONCERNS: The registry row and the lint surface's sub-verb table are in place and record-lint exits 0 over the tree at this commit (run by the auditor, warnings only); concern: the landing-order clause (armed before this landed) is a history fact the delivered tree cannot show. evidence: .abcd/development/brief/04-surfaces/README.md:31 — "| 16 | /abcd:lint | shipped |" evidence: .abcd/development/brief/04-surfaces/16-lint.md:30 — "| outbound | gate | shipped |" evidence: .abcd/development/brief/04-surfaces/README.md:46 — "The Status column is machine-checked: the surface_coverage record-lint rule" evidence: Makefile:164 — "record-lint:"
• ac-6 — MET: The naming register's bucket enum separates lint from audit by what is compared, the task-class enum carries both tokens, and no agent file claims the audit token for conformance work (the conformance check runs with no agent at all). evidence: .abcd/development/brief/02-constraints/04-naming.md:172 — "| bucket ∈ {lint, review, audit, gate} | Assessment-surface classifier, separated by what is compared to what" evidence: .abcd/development/brief/02-constraints/04-naming.md:180 — "| task_classes (capability_scope tokens) ∈ `{oracle_review, intent_audit, spec_planning, code_rescue, principle_distillation, lifeboat_packing, audit, lint," evidence: agents/docs-currency-reviewer.md:8 — "task_classes: [cross_document_audit]"
• ac-7 — MET: The shipped record declares impact breaking and the 0.6.0 changelog section carries the entry under the breaking heading. evidence: .abcd/development/intents/shipped/itd-124-the-conformance-check-calls-itself-lint.md:10 — "impact: breaking" evidence: CHANGELOG.md:1112 — "- The conformance check calls itself lint. abcd audit is now abcd lint"

Gap audit:

• honoured:
  • abcd lint replaces abcd audit with the tri-state exit contract and no alias evidence: internal/surface/cli/lint_surface_test.go:174 — "t.Fatalf("abcd audit must be unknown (exit 2), got exit %d stderr %q", code, stderr.String())"
  • /abcd:audit returns to its reserved seat evidence: .abcd/development/brief/02-constraints/04-naming.md:63 — "> Note: /abcd:audit appears both here and in the exemptions above. The two"
  • the conformance core moves to its own package evidence: internal/core/repolint/repolint.go:9 — "// severity-to-exit-code semantics (0 clean, 1 warnings, 2 any error), and SARIF"
• diverged:
  • the itd-85 surface's identifiers all move evidence: internal/core/repolint/rule_privacy.go:61 — "const auditWaiver = "abcd-audit:allow""
• missing: (none)