Omd Autopilot

omd:autopilot

Use this skill for an ordinary natural-language request to create a new product surface without requiring the user to name a skill, choose a reference, or set up the guided harness.

This is a separate workflow from omd:harness. Never claim to have approved or bypassed its mandatory checkpoints.

Ownership

The current main host agent is the only implementation owner. Specialists are read-only advisers. They may write only inside the current run's advisory folders and must never edit DESIGN.md or product files.

State machine

1. DETECT — inspect the repository, real consumer route, stack, existing DESIGN.md, preferences, components, states, assets and protected behavior. When OMD_AUTHORITY_CONTROLLER_RUN_DIR is present, use that exact relative path as the one run directory; do not derive or substitute a slug. Create the run-scoped task.md while retaining the exact user-prompt bytes verbatim (extra clearly labelled code observations may follow, but may never be presented as user authority), then run autopilot-mission.cjs <project-root> <run-dir> bootstrap. This freezes the initial product tree and mission budgets before any product write.

2. AUTHORITY_GATE — run scripts/design-council-prime.cjs in the run scope. Freeze its decision ledger before any product write.

3. BOUNDED_COUNCIL — dispatch no more than three evidence-required, read-only lanes. Do not dispatch a lane for a settled decision. A generic authorized greenfield mission uses only the design-system and interaction lanes; locale/copy or explicit external-evidence needs may add one relevant third lane. After the authority handoff reaches PROPOSE_PLAN, run autopilot-council-plan.cjs <project-root> <run-dir>, dispatch exactly the listed roles exactly once and in parallel (in bounded external-controller mode, execute those same lanes inline per the budget section instead of spawning advisers), then collect each result once and run autopilot-council-reconcile.cjs <project-root> <run-dir>. The reconciled receipt is mandatory and never grants product-write authority. Every lane must write the exact JSON shape declared in plan.json. Never send a follow-up, retry, or reformat request for a malformed/missing adviser result; fail the council honestly and preserve implementation time instead.

4. CONSEQUENTIAL_INTERVIEW — ask zero or one batch. Ask only unresolved product-authority decisions that materially change acceptance or the design system. A sufficiently authorized prompt proceeds without a question. Never create, infer, or edit council-intake.answers.json on the user's behalf; that file may contain only an actual user response relayed verbatim after the controller has entered CONSEQUENTIAL_INTERVIEW. Unattended mode (--unattended in the prompt, or .omd/config.json "unattended": true): there is no user to answer, so each question takes its first (recommended) option and the choice is recorded in loop-trace.json → autoSelected[] as {question, chosen, alternatives} so the decision is auditable afterwards. Options that delete or overwrite files that existed before the mission are never auto-selected — the mission fails that requirement honestly instead. council-intake.answers.json is still never written: auto-selection is a trace entry, not a user answer.

5. DESIGN_SYSTEM_DISPOSITION — resolve exactly one of reuse, establish, refresh, or surface-local-only. A missing exact brand source is blocked. After the council handoff reaches PROPOSE_PLAN, run the installed design-system-plan.cjs <project-root> <run-dir> helper. Its design-system-decision.json receipt is mandatory before any product write.

6. SYSTEM_PROOF — for establish or refresh, use the contract in references/design-system-contract.md. The design-system architect may propose; the main agent writes only run-scoped graph/provenance/coverage drafts. New generation, synthesis, refresh, and refactor are single-write Core v2: never emit legacy frontmatter or 13/15/16-section layouts. After the design-system-decision.json receipt grants establish/refresh authority, inspect the environment before preparing a review. When OMD_AUTHORITY_CONTROLLER_RECEIPT is present, the main agent is explicitly not the project owner: it must not run either approval helper, pass a --reviewer, assert --authority-transition-approved, calculate a hash, or choose a second output name. Author the three drafts once, with every interactive component declaring all seven state-applicability entries and every non-interactive component declaring only a reason (non-interactive error/success display variants do not require a focus-visible state).

   Before spending the single activation, validate the drafts with the controller's provider-free dry-check. It may be run any number of times and never counts against the activation budget:

   node $OMD_AUTHORITY_CONTROLLER_EXECUTABLE --dry-check . $OMD_AUTHORITY_CONTROLLER_RUN_DIR
   

   The dry-check compiles the drafts into a scratch package and verifies that every evidence path referenced by provenance.json and coverage.json (for example council/<lane>/result.json) exists as a real file at the project root. Fix every reported issue and rerun the dry-check until it prints "status": "dry-check-pass". Only then invoke exactly once:

   node $OMD_AUTHORITY_CONTROLLER_EXECUTABLE . $OMD_AUTHORITY_CONTROLLER_RUN_DIR
   

   Both commands must be issued standalone, byte-exact as written — never append ;, &&, echo, redirects, or any other text to either command.

   That provider-free helper binds the preregistered external controller, compiles from the prepared review's normalized inputs, creates the exact checkpoint, adopts atomically, and runs project validation. If it fails, preserve the single failure and stop system work—never create review-v2, package-v2, or a replacement mission. This path exists to protect the product-build budget; after success, move directly to the acceptance plan and real route, giving the explicit unavailable-information state the same implementation priority as default/focus-visible.

   Without that receipt, follow the ordinary human-owner flow below. validate the authority-neutral graph draft—without projection or projection.sha256—and prepare the exact non-authoritative review preview:

   omd design-md prepare-review <graph> --provenance <provenance> --coverage <coverage> --out-dir <review> [--migration-report <report>]
   

   The exact preview must be approved by the actual project owner or a preregistered external authority controller, never by the main agent itself:

   omd design-md approve-review <review>/review-request.json --reviewer <project-owner-id> --out <approval> --authority-transition-approved
   omd design-md compile <review>/input-graph.json --provenance <review>/provenance.json --coverage <review>/coverage.json --review-receipt <approval> [--migration-report <review>/migration-report.json] --out-dir <fresh> --adopt
   

   If the public binary is unavailable, only the installed exact-equivalent prepare-design-md-core-review.cjs and compile-design-md-core.cjs helpers with the same inputs are allowed. Never hand-write or patch DESIGN.md, section anchors, the seven design-md:claim declarations, any design-md:claim-end, manifest, or binding hashes; those bytes are canonical compiler-owned output. If the compiler demands a placeholder, precomputed, or zero projection SHA, fail closed; the compiler must create the first binding itself. Never publish into an existing, project-owned, or symlinked output directory.

   Read back and validate the fresh adopted package before project adoption. Compiler PASS proves only schema, Portable declaration conformance, canonical rendering, and binding integrity. It does not prove factual accuracy, provenance truth, font/asset licenses, locale behavior, accessibility, or visual quality. Coverage booleans are not evidence: every provenance/group reference must resolve to a real project or run artifact, and the validator computes system checks from the graph and manifest bound to the exact compiler-produced DESIGN.md. Keep provenance/coverage and the installed final project-system validator mandatory; never fill missing bindings with agent-calculated hashes. If the compiled manifest does not bind them, fail closed at staging. Bind and install the six exact artifacts only via:

   omd design-md prepare-checkpoint <fresh> --reviewer <project-owner-id> --out <checkpoint> --authority-transition-approved
   omd design-md adopt <fresh> --project-root <project-root> --checkpoint-receipt <checkpoint>
   

   If the receipt-gated atomic adopter is unavailable, preserve the stage and stop. Then run validate-project-design-system.cjs <project-root> <run-dir>. Do not implement the product until that proof passes. If refresh/refactor starts from a legacy document, run the provider-free migration/check first and require dropped=0, no unsupported promotion, round-trip equality, and opaque preservation under extensions["dev.oh-my-design.migration"]. The staged migration candidate is non-authoritative and keeps its named source DESIGN.md canonical until the explicit compile/adopt transition. Do not hand-edit legacy headings. Never author or edit system/proof.json directly. Run the installed validate-project-design-system.cjs <project-root> <run-dir> helper; the mission controller validates its full schema, source hashes, required groups/checks, outcome, and exact DESIGN.md binding before it authorizes PRODUCT_BUILD. A minimal { pass: true } proof is an authority failure.

7. ACCEPTANCE_PLAN — before product admission, materialize acceptance-plan.json. Quote the exact task bytes for every journey, constraint, and protected unknown. Lock the real route, default/loading/ empty/error/success/disabled states, 1440/390/320/200%-reflow viewports, and the exact functionality/journey/responsive/keyboard/accessibility/ honesty/design-conformance checks. A generic checklist is not admission. Preserve every positive journey and supported-item claim at equal or stronger semantics. An honest unavailable, unknown, deferred, or fallback state may coexist with a required journey, but it never satisfies or replaces that journey unless the prompt explicitly makes that exact item unavailable. For example, “start a reservation” requires a newly operable reservation-start state, not only a notice that reservations are unavailable; a stated five-locale surface requires localized core content in all five locales even when a secondary translation resource has an unavailable state. Reject the plan and revise it before product admission when one requirement weakens or contradicts another.

8. PRODUCT_BUILD — implement the requested real route and all required empty/loading/error/success/disabled states. Apply only proven or explicitly proposed project tokens. When a controller execution budget is present, finish authority and council work before its handoff reserve begins. The reserve belongs to implementation, acceptance proof, and controller handoff—not additional research or adviser repair. Treat zero document overflow at 390px, 320px, and 200%-reflow as a product requirement, and keep primary task controls at least 44×44 CSS px on touch viewports unless the control is an inline prose link or a native control whose associated label supplies the target. Treat state transitions as product contracts: a validation error moves focus to the failing control and is programmatically associated with it; a success status names the affected record/action and remains reflected in the source collection or detail state. Run contrast checks on enabled and disabled task controls—not only the final success state. A filterable collection must retain a meaningful baseline dataset that makes the filter outcome observable; when a native select is used, its selected option is both the programmatic and visible active state. If a progressbar role is present, keep aria-valuenow and aria-valuemax synchronized with the visible progress text in every state and locale. Never hide focusable descendants with aria-hidden alone: use hidden, inert, or remove/disable their focusability until the state opens. When an acceptance requirement makes an honesty boundary observable (for example fictional sample data or “not medical advice”), render that boundary as visible accessible product copy rather than keeping it only in source notes.

9. VERIFY — verify functionality, same-route desktop/mobile/320px/200%, keyboard, accessibility, responsive behavior, copy, evidence honesty and DESIGN.md-to-code conformance. proof.json schema 0.2 must bind the mission, acceptance plan, product-build admission, route, exact current product-tree SHA, repair round, every task requirement, and every quality check. Each atomic result needs non-empty evidence. pass is the conjunction computed from those results; prose confidence or a self-authored summary is not proof. “Browser unavailable”, skipped checks, or missing screenshots must be a failed check, never a passing substitute. Render integrity is an atomic check. Run the deterministic checker on every rendered page the mission produced — node test-v2/tools/render-integrity.mjs <page.html…> in this repo, omd check render <page.html…> when installed — and bind its verdict per page into proof.json with the tool output as evidence (overflow-x, viewport escape, text clip, unreset UA margins, missing font, broken image, encoding). A FAIL is a failed check; a page the tool could not load is a failed check. Text contrast is a second atomic check. Run node test-v2/tools/text-contrast.mjs <page.html…> in this repo, omd check contrast <page.html…> when installed, on the same pages and bind its verdict into proof.json the same way. It measures the nominal computed color against the actual background pixel, so accent-on-accent text, headlines over photos or gradients, and grey meta text are caught before the critique round, not after delivery. Body text below 4.5:1 and large text, focus rings, or essential UI boundaries below 3:1 are failed checks. Fix them by changing tokens or adding a scrim in the build, never by lowering the threshold. A page whose contrast the tool could not measure is a failed check, not a pass. Append one entry per verification round to loop-trace.json → rounds[]: {round, renderIntegrity: {defects, items}, critique: {blocks}, fixed: [...]} so the mission can show its defect count going down, not just its last verdict. The same file carries autoSelected[] from CONSEQUENTIAL_INTERVIEW. When .benchmark/controller-verification-policy.json is present, the installed mission controller is the objective-verification authority. Every local proof, passing or failing, must stop at EXTERNAL_VERIFY before any repair budget is consumed; do not write delivery, start a local repair, end the mission, remove the policy, or invent its receipt. The host controller evaluates the real route and supplies the next hash-bound state. If the controller passes while a broader local check still fails, the remaining local failure may then use the same bounded repair budget. In this controller-owned mode, never discover, install, launch, or probe a local browser, Playwright/Chromium binary, HTTP server, screenshot command, browser harness, or GUI application. Do not spend the controller handoff reserve testing whether those tools exist. Finish deterministic source checks, write the truthful proof, advance to EXTERNAL_VERIFY, and return control immediately; the controller owns all browser execution.

10. BOUNDED_REVISION — the main agent may apply at most two focused repair rounds in the same mission. The controller writes an exclusive receipt for every failed proof, freezes the exact failed requirement/check IDs, and requires both a changed product tree and a replacement proof at the next round. Critics stay read-only. Unresolved BLOCK produces a failed handoff. A controller-authorized round is an internal continuation of the same one-prompt mission, not a retry or replacement. Read only its exact .benchmark/controller-feedback/round-<n>.json, preserve passing behavior, update the product and atomic proof for that round, and return to EXTERNAL_VERIFY. Never bootstrap a second mission to escape the findings.

11. HANDOFF — report implemented files, system disposition, question count, proof hashes, screenshots, failures, time and token coverage.

Run autopilot-mission.cjs <project-root> <run-dir> advance at every state boundary. The controller rejects product edits before authority, limits pre-proof project changes to the exact compiler-produced adopted package, issues the product-build admission only after an exact system proof and acceptance plan, recomputes atomic proof pass, and refuses to force-pass or replay an exhausted repair budget. Only one project-scoped Autopilot mission may be active. Continue its bounded repair loop in the same run; never create a second run to replace, retry, or escape an unresolved active mission. Completed and failed missions are terminal and non-resumable.

Bounded external-controller budget

When OMD_AUTHORITY_CONTROLLER_RUN_DIR is present, the mission runs under a hard wall-clock budget and the product route is the graded deliverable. The design-system rigor stays intact — what changes is where the minutes go.

• Check elapsed time (date +%s) at every state boundary. Authority, council, and system work together must finish inside the FIRST 40% of the budget; everything after belongs to PRODUCT_BUILD → VERIFY → controller handoff.
• Dispatch NO adviser subagents in this mode. Execute the planned council lanes inline: the main agent authors each lane's exact JSON shape as its own read-only analysis from DETECT evidence. Inline lanes still never grant product-write authority; reconcile normally. A subagent round-trip you can answer yourself from the repository is budget theft from the product.
• Author the three system drafts in one pass, run the controller --dry-check until it passes, then invoke the controller once, immediately. Do not re-read, re-verify, or beautify drafts the compiler will normalize anyway — the dry-check IS the verification step, and it is free (it never counts against the single activation).
• The dry-check catches schema/enum violations and missing evidence files (every path referenced by provenance/coverage evidence must exist at the project root). A guessed enum or phantom evidence path wastes the single activation — the controller fail-closes on the first violation and there is no second invocation, so never invoke the real activation while a dry-check is still failing.
• The controller invocation must be the ENTIRE command — never append ;, &&, echo, date, or anything else to it (sequencing voids the exactly-once contract). Run elapsed-time checks as their own separate commands before or after.
• Before invoking the controller, ensure the exact task.md bytes also exist at the project root (copy from the run directory): the adopter requires <project-root>/task.md as proof evidence.
• If authority+system work has consumed 50% of the budget before adoption, skip every remaining optional analysis and go straight to the smallest compiler-valid drafts.

Product route order (graded-state first)

In PRODUCT_BUILD, implement in this exact order — a polished page missing a required state scores zero, an honest skeleton with every state scores:

1. Semantic skeleton for the real route: landmarks, single nav with disclosure collapse, skip link targeting #main (never the primary CTA), heading order, form field ID graph (label[for], aria-describedby hint+error chain, role="alert" errors, focusable role="status" success).
2. EVERY required state as a real interaction outcome, before any visual polish. The task brief's journey verbs ARE the graded states. Rewrite the brief as a verb list first ("filter X", "inspect one Y", "assign a Z", "switch locale", "mark progress", "see completion") — each verb is one state that must be REACHABLE by real keyboard interaction (Tab to the control, then Enter/Space) on the product's own controls. A state that cannot be reached by the described action does not exist — and a state reached only through a developer switcher does not exist either: NEVER render "Show " radios, demo toggles, or any state menu in the product UI. data-state="<state-name>" markers live on the real components that enter those states. Every entry in the system's honesty/unknown ledger renders as a visible unavailable-information node — prose disclaimers alone do not count.
3. Programmatic-semantics parity — every state change updates the visible UI AND the machine contract in the same paint:
   • Selection/toggle: aria-selected / aria-pressed / aria-checked / aria-current on the control itself, and for filters also a visible role="status" or aria-live summary ("Showing only urgent …").
   • Validation error: focus returns to the offending field, the field gets aria-describedby pointing at a visible role="alert" (or aria-live) message — all three together, not any one alone.
   • Persisted outcome (e.g. an assignment): announce it in role="status" WITH the record's visible ID and the chosen value, and update the source record's own text to show the same value.
   • Locale switch: update <html lang>, the selector's committed value, and the rendered script together; never silently change the selected language. Progress: role="progressbar" aria-valuenow/max must equal the visible "N of M" text.
   • Detail surfaces are role="dialog"|"region"|"complementary" containing the record's visible ID; records carry stable visible IDs.
   • Name controls with the brief's exact nouns and verbs ("Reserve a tool", "Assign owner", "Urgent") — the brief's language is the accessible name, verbatim, with no decorative words prepended or appended.
4. Primary-action uniqueness: exactly one visible primary CTA (chrome or hero, not both), marked data-cta="primary"; the form submit is data-cta="submit"; repeated per-item controls are data-cta="local" and never reuse the primary verb string. No sticky/footer primary duplicates.
5. Structure invariants: exactly one <main> and exactly one <h1> per rendered view — count them in the final DOM, zero and two both fail.
6. Responsive determinism — verify at 320, 390, and 1440 px before finishing: document.documentElement.scrollWidth <= clientWidth (no horizontal document scroll), the primary action fully inside the viewport, every interactive control ≥ 44px in its smaller dimension and horizontally unclipped. A quick DOM-math pass over the final HTML/CSS counts; skipping the check does not.
7. Evidence honesty determinism — for every datum category the brief forbids inventing (counts, prices, testimonials, logos, regulatory claims): write an explicit honest-absence sentence that NAMES the withheld category, placed where a reader would expect the datum; label every fabricated record "sample" (or "demo"/"fictional") visibly; never emit an affirmative number, price, star rating, or endorsement for a forbidden category anywhere on the page, including image alt text.
8. Foreground/background color PAIRS from the adopted tokens (never a lone accent value), decorative media aria-hidden and informative SVG named via role="img" + title/desc, then visual polish last with whatever budget remains.

Before declaring the product finished, run a SELF-WALK: list every journey verb from the brief, and for each write (a) the exact keyboard path that reaches it and (b) the programmatic evidence that proves it (which attribute or role changes). Any row missing either entry is unfinished work — fix it before the mission proof, budget permitting, because a missing row scores the same as a missing page.

Philosophy derivation chain (mandatory order)

Read references/derivation-chain.md before any system draft. The order is PHILOSOPHY → DERIVE (decision table with D-ids and rationales) → TOKENS (with D-id back-references in comments) → COMPONENT SPECS (documented before code; select from references/presets/INDEX.md first and derive token slots from the decision table — never improvise from zero what the preset catalog already validates (gate GS8); references/component-craft.md is the floor) → LAYOUT GRAMMAR (per page, with content back-calculation — if the data cannot fill the grammar, enrich the data first, never leave wide viewports empty) → BUILD (pages consume only) → RENDER CRITIQUE → DESIGN.md carrying the philosophy and decision table so a designer can read WHY every value is what it is. A token value without a D-id rationale is an improvised value (gate GS7).

Data discovery (good UI carries the data)

A screen is only as good as the data it carries. Before designing anything, inventory the DATA TRUTH SOURCES and write data-inventory.md into the run directory:

1. Provided fixtures first: data/*.json, data/*.js, CSV, seeded stores.
2. Declared contracts next: OpenAPI/Swagger specs, GraphQL schemas, TypeScript interfaces/types, ORM models, API route handlers.
3. If neither exists and the brief implies records, the mode decides:
   • Guided mode: ASK the user for the data shape, or ask permission to scan the repository for data sources before proceeding.
   • Autonomous/benchmark mode: use only what was provided; state the absence honestly on-screen. NEVER invent fields, records, or endpoints.

Then design FROM the data shape, not toward a template:

• Entities and their cardinalities pick the page patterns (a 34-row entity is a table with filters, not three cards) and the density dial.
• Every enum in the data (status, category, stock) becomes a system token set: one color/mark per value, defined once, legible at a glance.
• Every field a user needs is on screen or one interaction away; IDs and timestamps are visible where an operator would search by them. A field in the dataset that never renders anywhere needs a reason.
• Aggregates shown as KPIs are COMPUTED from the data at runtime and their definition is stated near the number (e.g. "open = pending + packed").
• When an API is the source (now or planned): the schema is the contract — per-endpoint loading/error/empty states, pagination beyond ~50 rows, and no rendering of fields the contract does not define.

Visual quality contract (mandatory read)

Before PRODUCT_BUILD, read references/visual-quality-contract.md in full and treat every item as a gate, not a suggestion. Non-negotiables repeated here because violating them wastes the whole run:

• NEVER render developer/state switchers in the product UI; states come from real product interactions only.
• NEVER ship native unstyled form controls — restyle every control from system tokens with the accessible native input underneath.
• The system carries a display/body type pair with a ≥2× display step, a label role, section-air spacing steps (2.5–6rem), ONE surface genre, and accent as a small signal (≤~5% of any viewport).
• The written system states its responsive behaviour and its component states as VALUES, not adjectives: Layout & Platforms names each breakpoint with the grid and type-scale change that happens there, and Components & States gives every interactive component its applicable states with the token each state actually uses. "Responsive" and "has hover/focus states" without the numbers is an unwritten section — evaluators scored exactly this gap lowest.
• NEVER let a first-paint overlay (cookie banner, sheet, modal, sticky promo) cover the H1, the hero subject, or the primary action — at 390px as well as 1440px. A bottom bar or a scroll-triggered appearance is fine; a sheet over the hero is not. Hero image crops must keep the subject the brief asks for intact at mobile width.
• After building, run the ONE-round self-critique from the contract (5 axes
  • gate sweep, System Fidelity replaces variety) and write critique.md into the run directory before the mission proof.

Multi-page products

When the brief asks for more than one page, the design system is the consistency contract: ONE shared stylesheet owns tokens and components (defined exactly once); every page links it and adds only page-level layout. Nav and footer are designed once and rendered identically on every page with aria-current on the active link. Body, heading, and primary-action styling must compute identically across pages; every internal link resolves to a real page. Build page one as the system's proof, then express the remaining pages FROM it — if page two needs a new token or component, that is a system change first, not a page-local invention.

Motion and micro-transitions (system-owned)

Motion is a design-system concern, not per-element improvisation. When the brief asks for a modern/polished feel (or names transitions), establish motion TOKENS in the system first and cite only them:

• One duration scale (fast ~120ms, base ~200ms, slow ~320ms) and at most two easing curves (one enter, one exit). Every transition on the page uses a token pair — a one-off cubic-bezier is an unauthorized token.
• Animate ONLY transform and opacity (compositor-friendly); never animate layout properties (width/height/top/margin) or box-shadow directly (fake elevation with a pseudo-element opacity fade).
• Standard vocabulary, applied sparingly: entrance fade-up for major sections (one-time, on first reveal), hover elevation/tilt on interactive cards, pressed-state scale on buttons, focus-visible transition on CTAs. One page needs 3–5 total motion patterns, not one per element.
• EVERY animation sits behind @media (prefers-reduced-motion: reduce) with a non-animated equivalent state — reduced-motion is a graded contract, not an afterthought.
• Provided asset images get explicit width/height (no CLS) and motion applies to their container, never the raw img.

Framework idiom projection

The adopted design system is stack-neutral; the PRODUCT expresses it in the stack the brief names. Detect the stack from the brief and any provided runtime (vendored libraries in assets/), then project tokens and state semantics into that stack's native idiom — never a foreign one:

• Vanilla HTML/CSS: tokens as :root custom properties; states as data-/aria- attributes driven by small event handlers.
• React (including buildless Preact+HTM): tokens as one exported theme object AND mirrored :root custom properties; components as functions whose props carry state; aria attributes computed from the same props that drive the visuals (single source of truth — never a DOM query after render); lists keyed by stable record IDs; no innerHTML string templating.
• Tailwind (when present): tokens declared once in the config/theme layer and referenced by utility classes; never inline arbitrary values that bypass the token scale.
• The same journey states, aria semantics, and honesty rules apply identically in every stack — the projection changes syntax, never the contract.

Design-system decision

• Valid compatible root DESIGN.md → reuse without reopening it. Legacy 13/15/16-section and unmarked documents remain readable during the compatibility window; reusing one does not silently rewrite it.
• Explicit or delegated authority to build a system → establish.
• Explicit replacement of an existing system → refresh; legacy input must pass staged migration/check and opaque-extension preservation before replacement.
• Narrow repair or explicit refusal → surface-local-only; never promote local choices as project facts.
• Broad greenfield with no authority → ask one question: project system or local surface contract.
• Exact official brand request with no authoritative source → block rather than fabricate.

Reference selection happens only after this decision and only when it supplies useful verified inspiration. A reference never owns product facts.

Evidence and unknowns

Classify each consequential system decision as prompt-fact, repository-fact, verified-reference-inspiration, agent-proposed-greenfield-decision, or unresolved.

Unknown means absent at the smallest boundary. Never synthesize a company fact, font, component, metric, testimonial, price, security promise, or narrative. Core v2 does not require placeholder facts: omit unresolved values from tokens, prescriptive prose, and code. A consequential unresolved decision may be named in Governance without a suggested fallback.

Required run artifacts

Store permanent artifacts under .omd/runs/<run-id>/:

• mission.json
• council/decision-ledger.json
• design-system-decision.json
• system/proposal.md, migration report/rollback references when applicable, and generated system/proof.json
• implementation.json
• acceptance-plan.json
• proof.json, repairs/round-<n>.json, and screenshots
• loop-trace.json — per-round renderIntegrity/critique counts and autoSelected[] (the audit trail of unattended choices); an empty rounds[] means verification never ran and the proof cannot pass
• delivery.json

Receipts bind the original task, repository evidence, DESIGN.md, product output, consumer route, states, viewports and validator results. Missing proof is not a pass.

The project-owned canonical system lives outside the run at:

• .omd/system/manifest.json
• .omd/system/graph.json
• .omd/system/provenance.json
• .omd/system/coverage.json

The visible DESIGN.md begins with # <Product> Design System, contains exactly the seven neutral design-md:section anchors in the frozen Core order, and has no YAML/frontmatter, OmD/tool/generator/quality metadata at its top. Only an adopted, valid profile: portable-core manifest with exact graph/projection hashes makes the graph canonical; a migration candidate keeps its named source DESIGN.md canonical. The seven semantic design-md:claim declarations and every design-md:claim-end are compiler-owned and must not be edited after rendering. The Markdown remains a complete portable contract on its own.

Guided-mode boundary

If the user explicitly asks to review journey/system/validation checkpoints or to collaborate phase by phase, route to omd:harness and preserve all of its mandatory checkpoints. Do not silently switch an active guided run to Autopilot.