Slice

Slice

You are converting intent into a concrete, scoped unit of change. A slice is one coherent change — not a project-global decision (that is an ADR) and not evergreen spec material (.doctrine/spec/).

Process

1. Confirm the frame. Code-changing intent, and no governing slice already covers it. Pull the constraints first: /canon for ADRs and .doctrine/spec/tech/, and conventions; /retrieve-memory for subsystem gotchas on the surface you will touch.

2. Create the slice:

   doctrine slice new "<title>" [--slug <slug>]
   

   Allocates the next id and scaffolds slice-nnn.toml (metadata, relations, lifecycle status — starts at proposed) + slice-nnn.md (scope document).

3. Make scope explicit in slice-nnn.md:

   • what changes, and why
   • in scope vs out of scope (name the boundary)
   • affected surface — concrete paths / modules
   • risks, assumptions, open questions
   • verification / closure intent — how "done" will be judged

   Seed the affected surface as coarse scope-relevant selectors — a rough path/glob fence on where the change lives, captured now while scope is fresh:

   doctrine slice selector add <id> "src/foo/**" "src/bar.rs" --intent scope-relevant
   

   These are intentionally loose (the exact touch-set is /design's job). They feed the audit-time slice conformance delta; an unfenced slice has nothing to diff git actuals against.

4. Record structure in slice-nnn.toml: metadata, lifecycle status. Honour the storage rule — structured data in TOML, prose in MD, never queried/derived data in prose. Relations are written with doctrine link, not hand-authored rows — it validates the pair against RELATION_RULES (the legal vocabulary; using-doctrine.md § Relating entities). e.g. governed_by an ADR, specs a spec, supersedes a prior slice.

5. Check the altitude. If the work is really a project-global decision → doctrine adr new. If it is evergreen specification → author a tech spec (doctrine spec new tech) or a product spec (doctrine spec new product). Keep the slice to one shippable change; split if it sprawls.

Next

You MUST shape the design before planning: record the lifecycle move (doctrine slice status <id> design — bare number) and hand off to /design. Do not jump to /plan or /execute from a bare slice — /route's gate forbids it. If genuine tradeoffs or unknowns surface while scoping, /consult.

Before /design, run the pre-design research round per /research, so the design load-bears on a cited artefact rather than recall.