The same facts were restated in up to three files, and the
restatements had already drifted: two claimed timings were 2-5x
off, and the maintain rationale existed in four copies with
different numbers each. Duplicated prose is a liability, not
redundancy.
Each fact now has exactly one owner, with links from the others:
- tool inventory: README § Tooling
- configuration rationale: README § Tooling decisions
- prefix taxonomy: CONTRIBUTING § Script prefix convention
- what runs when and at what cost: CONTRIBUTING § Feedback tiers
- publish procedure: CONTRIBUTING § Publishing workflow
README loses its whole Script prefix convention section and the
Workflows section; CONTRIBUTING loses the Why-these-splits bullets
that repeated the tier table and the rules list. Prose is 23KB to
17KB, with no rule or rationale dropped.
Copying the template into .git/COMMIT_EDITMSG has no lasting
effect: git pre-fills that file from the commit.template config,
so the script registered nothing and the template never appeared.
Use git's own mechanism, which is what git reads for every
interactive commit.
Name, prefix and call site are unchanged, so README's setup
bullet stays correct; only the sentence describing the old copy
in CONTRIBUTING needed rewording. Note the config holds a path
relative to the working directory, so it applies to commits made
from the repo root.
A skill duplicated AGENTS.md policy and only worked in Agent-Skills harnesses.
A bare top-level script is the repo-native affordance: every harness (and CI,
and a human) reads package.json#scripts as the source of truth. Add
`npm run verify` = `npm run check` + `test:unit` (tsc runs once, since check
already type-checks) as the one-shot whole-project correctness gate.
Delete .agents/skills/verify/SKILL.md. Document verify in README (Development +
a Tooling-decisions bullet + bare-command note in the prefix list), CONTRIBUTING
(feedback-tier table, "Before pushing", the bare-command paragraph, a "why these
splits" bullet), and AGENTS.md (test = fast iterating gate, verify = definition
of done; skill pointer removed).
`npm run check` should be the fast, offline correctness ladder only (tsc +
oxlint + oxfmt + cspell, ~3s), so an agent can run it as a confirmation gate
during feature work. check:knip / check:outdated were advisory whole-project /
network scans, and check-outdated exits non-zero whenever any dep is behind.
Keeping them in check made `npm run check` (and the CI build gate) fail on
dependency freshness, which must not block an unrelated feature PR.
Rename them to maintain:knip / maintain:outdated, aggregate under `npm run
maintain`, and run it in CI as a dedicated non-blocking job (continue-on-error)
that surfaces findings without ever gating a merge. Update the script-prefix
convention, the feedback-tier table, and AGENTS.md: the agent may now run
`npm run check`; only `maintain` stays out of the feature loop.
AI coding agents read AGENTS.md automatically, not README. Make AGENTS.md
a thin pointer: the stable first-action facts plus links to CONTRIBUTING.md,
README.md, and package.json#scripts. Keep the rules prose in CONTRIBUTING.md
so humans and agents don't diverge (same anti-drift move as dropping
project-specs.md).
Clarify the agent's verification loop: npm run test is the mandatory gate;
the pre-commit hook already runs the fast offline checks (tsc, oxlint, oxfmt,
cspell) on staged files, and npm run check (knip + outdated) is repo-maintenance,
not part of the feature loop. Forbid type-system escape hatches (@ts-nocheck,
oxlint-disable, as-casts) as agent-only rules; a human may still add a
review-visible disable as a last resort, so the location convention stays in
CONTRIBUTING.md with a forward reference.
Adds the earliest feedback tier to the ladder: `npm run watch`
re-runs tests on file save, started manually in a dedicated
terminal pane. Built on Node 26's native `node --test --watch`
(no new dependency).
Structure follows the existing prefix convention:
- `watch:test` — runs the test suite in watch mode
- `watch` — umbrella that aggregates `watch:*` children
(currently just `watch:test`; future `watch:oxlint` etc.
would aggregate here, switching to concurrent execution)
CONTRIBUTING.md documents the new tier in three places: the
prefix convention list, the feedback tiers table (new top row),
and a 'Why these splits?' bullet explaining why watch is a
manual tier rather than a hook. README's Development section
gains a one-line pointer.
After dropping project-specs.md last commit, three categories of
content were lost that have no other home in the repo:
1. The script prefix convention with its 'pick the right prefix,
don't invent one' rule
2. The feedback-tier system (table + 'why these splits?')
3. The publishing workflow (tagged-release flow)
These are maintainer/contributor-facing material, not user-facing.
The standard OSS location for this kind of doc is CONTRIBUTING.md,
which keeps it separate from README.md (user docs) so the two
don't drift. README.md gains a pointer at the bottom.
The content is condensed: no config dumps, no restatements of
package.json, no historical commit-message examples. Only the
rationale that isn't already in the actual config files.
tmu