Let the product thinker edit the brief and their parts of intents in a local web editor before anything is committed

Let the product thinker edit the brief and their parts of intents in a local web editor before anything is committed

The need

A product thinker owns the brief and the user-facing parts of intents, but today editing them means a terminal editor or the agent writing for them. In an agent session neither works well: the session's shell has no terminal, so a VISUAL or EDITOR set to a terminal editor (here: emacs -nw) cannot open, and no editor server was running. The owner asked for an option to edit the brief, and their parts of intents, before anything is committed to GitHub.

Design (discussed with the owner)

1. Editor resolution: an abcd setting in user-level config, then VISUAL, then EDITOR, then the platform default. At a terminal, block like git commit; in an agent session, use a non-blocking form the person configured, or print the exact command for their own terminal; never fail silently.
2. A self-served local web editor: abcd starts a loopback-only server (random port, single-use token carried in the URL fragment, Host header check against DNS rebinding, lives for one round) and serves a verified copy of the editor release. The owner's domain (static hosting, no accounts, no data) only distributes releases. Same origin avoids CORS, the local-network-access prompt and mixed-content limits, and the domain cannot act on private files at run time.
3. Record-aware editing:
   • Brief: fully editable.
   • Intents: press release, why it matters, acceptance criteria, mechanism, scope condition text (identity markers hidden and preserved) and open questions/decisions editable.
   • Through verbs only: grounds through a form calling the verb; plan, hold and target as confirmed buttons (plan is the sign-off act).
   • Read-only: ids, links, status fields and audit notes.
4. Checks: deterministic checks on every save (name guard, record shape, links), judgement checks on done (conflicts with the vision page's tenets; the brief-to-intent consistency pass, flagging an edit that contradicts a filed, planned or shipped intent as a design decision owed).
5. Before commit: the session's changes per file, each kept or discarded; discard restores the session-start text, never HEAD, so earlier uncommitted work survives. Commit is a separate act, on a branch, under the person's own identity; push only when asked.

Evidence coming

The lab is building a prototype of 2 to 5 (loopback, self-served, token, record-aware intent form, lint on save, per-file keep/discard, a timed event log) to test with the product thinker in this repository. Its session logs will be attached to a follow-up report.

Remedy the reporter proposes: Add an edit verb that serves a record-aware editor from a local loopback server (release code distributed from the owner's domain and checksum-verified, like the binary), runs abcd's checks on every save and the judgement checks on done, shows the session's changes per file for keep or discard, and leaves the commit as a separate act under the person's own identity.

Reported by a managed repository (root commit c372ff6b8fc387ffdf1acf7c51bffe469b70b2e0) through the abcd inbox as rpt-2610071632391737, a enhancement against abcd v0.13.1, surface brief, intent records, a new edit verb, the review verb proposed in rpt-2610071611295053.

Evidence:

• rpt-2610071632391737 (the report, kept in the inbox)
• lab-261002171217-c372ff6
• rpt-2610071611295053
• rpt-2610071608595198