Spec Kitty Charter Doctrine

spec-kitty-charter-doctrine

Manage the charter lifecycle: interview, generate, context-load, sync, and status. Access doctrine artifacts programmatically via DoctrineService. Resolve agent profiles for role-scoped behavior. Load governance context iteratively at action boundaries rather than dumping everything upfront.

.kittify/charter/charter.yaml is the Spec Kitty runtime governance source for a project — the single git-tracked, structured file nesting governance, directives, catalog, activation, and overrides. .kittify/charter/charter.md is a curated, human-readable companion the runtime never parses or resolves policy from. A repository may also keep public governance docs outside .kittify/; those docs are human-facing authority unless charter.yaml's governance.doctrine.governance_references points at them. The doctrine layer (src/doctrine/) provides the reusable knowledge artifacts (directives, tactics, paradigms, styleguides, toolguides, procedures, agent profiles, step contracts) that the charter references.

⛔ ARCHITECTURAL INVARIANT: spec-kitty NEVER calls LLMs

spec-kitty is a CLI tool invoked BY an LLM harness (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Gemini, etc.). The LLM harness IS the inference engine. spec-kitty must NEVER call any LLM API itself.

This is not a preference. It is a hard architectural rule with no exceptions.

Why this rule exists

If spec-kitty called the Anthropic SDK internally:

• It would need a separate ANTHROPIC_API_KEY — a second API key alongside the one the harness already uses.
• It would bypass the harness entirely, making the agent's reasoning invisible.
• It would make spec-kitty Anthropic-specific, breaking all other harnesses.
• It would be a hidden inference call the user never authorized or configured.
• It would duplicate what the harness can already do better, with full context.

What this means for charter synthesis

Charter synthesis is an LLM reasoning task. YOU (the agent running this skill) are the LLM that should do it.

The synthesis workflow is:

answers.yaml   (the interview answers — what the user told spec-kitty about the project)
     +
doctrine schemas  (the YAML shapes expected for directives, tactics, styleguides)
     +
THIS SKILL  (the instructions you are reading right now)
     ↓
YOU generate the doctrine YAML files
     ↓
spec-kitty CLI commands  (validate, stage, and promote the files you wrote)

spec-kitty's CLI provides validation, schema-checking, DRG validation, neutrality gating, staging, and atomic promotion. It does NOT provide generation — that is your job as the agent.

If you see code that calls anthropic.Anthropic() or imports the anthropic SDK

inside spec-kitty source files, that is a bug. Remove it immediately.

Canonical locations that must NEVER contain import anthropic or any Anthropic SDK call:

• src/charter/ — any file
• src/specify_cli/ — any file
• pyproject.toml — must not list anthropic as a runtime dependency

How to Synthesize Doctrine Artifacts (Agent-Driven)

When a user says "synthesize charter doctrine", "generate project doctrine", or "run charter synthesize", you do the following — you do NOT call any CLI command that triggers an LLM. You ARE the LLM.

Step 1 — Read the interview answers

cat .kittify/charter/interview/answers.yaml

This file contains the user's responses: project intent, languages, testing requirements, quality gates, etc.

Step 2 — Read the doctrine schemas for the target artifact kinds

The current synthesis scope is: directive, tactic, styleguide.

Read shipped examples to understand the expected YAML shape. There is no doctrine list or doctrine show CLI command — use the programmatic DoctrineService API (documented in the Programmatic Doctrine Access section below) or read the YAML files directly from src/doctrine/<kind>/built-in/ (artifacts live at <type>/<pack>/[<category>/]<name> — ADR 2026-07-26-2):

from doctrine.service import DoctrineService
service = DoctrineService(shipped_root, project_root)

# Read a directive
directive = service.directives.get("<a-directive-id>")

# Read a tactic
tactic = service.tactics.get("<a-tactic-id>")

# Read a styleguide
styleguide = service.styleguides.get("<a-styleguide-id>")

To validate your project-layer doctrine artifacts run:

spec-kitty doctrine validate .kittify/

Step 3 — Read the interview mapping to know what to generate

The interview fields map to target artifact kinds:

• project_intent, quality_gates, risk_boundaries → directives
• testing_requirements → directives + tactics (TDD flavour)
• languages_frameworks → styleguides (language-specific)
• performance_targets, deployment_constraints → directives

For each synthesis target, derive: kind, slug (kebab-case, project-specific), title, and body (the full artifact content as YAML matching the shipped schema).

Step 4 — Write the doctrine YAML to .kittify/charter/generated/

The harness writes artifact inputs here; spec-kitty charter synthesize validates, stages, and promotes them into the live doctrine tree.

.kittify/charter/generated/
  directives/
    <NNN>-<slug>.directive.yaml
  tactics/
    <slug>.tactic.yaml
  styleguides/
    <slug>.styleguide.yaml

Use the shipped artifact YAML structure as your template. Make the content specific to the project based on the interview answers. Do not write generic filler.

Step 5 — Run the full validation stack without promoting

spec-kitty charter synthesize --dry-run

This is a real stage-and-validate pass. It writes the agent-authored artifacts into the staging tree, runs schema validation, project DRG validation, and the neutrality gate, then wipes the staging directory on success.

Step 6 — Promote the validated artifact set

spec-kitty charter synthesize

By default this reads from .kittify/charter/generated/ via the generated adapter and promotes the validated outputs into:

• .kittify/doctrine/ for artifact content and project graph.yaml
• .kittify/charter/provenance/ plus synthesis-manifest.yaml for bookkeeping

Step 7 — Commit the promoted charter synthesis state

git add .kittify/doctrine/ .kittify/charter/provenance/ .kittify/charter/synthesis-manifest.yaml
git commit -m "feat(charter): promote project-local doctrine from generated inputs"

How the Charter System Works

The charter is a governance-as-code framework. A single git-tracked, structured YAML file — charter.yaml — holds the project policy directly; the runtime reads it without any parse/extract step in between.

The 2-Layer Model

1. Structured charter (.kittify/charter/charter.yaml) — The single authoritative source. Nests four kinds of section:

   • governance / directives — hand-authored policy (testing, quality, performance, branching, doctrine selections; numbered project rules with severity and scope). Edit these directly; nothing overwrites them except a deliberate hand edit.
   • Flat-root activation keys (activated_kinds, activated_directives, mission_type_activations, …) — hand-authored, mirrors src/charter/packs/default.yaml.
   • catalog / metadata — generator-refreshed. charter generate rewrites these two sections deterministically on every run (doctrine reference manifest, generation timestamp); everything else in the file is preserved byte-for-byte through a round-trip merge.
   • overrides — hand-authored, forward-compatible project doctrine overrides.

2. Curated companion (.kittify/charter/charter.md) — Human-editable markdown. Written by hand, or by an agent during /spec-kitty.charter's chat flow — never by charter generate. The runtime never parses it for policy — it exists purely for human review/onboarding, and optionally to summarize charter.yaml or point at a public constitution. If the repository also has a public constitution or handbook, reference it from charter.yaml's governance.doctrine.governance_references (or authority_paths), not just from the companion prose.

.kittify/config.yaml carries a single charter: pointer (default .kittify/charter/charter.yaml) that resolves the active charter file — useful for redirecting to a shared or cross-project charter.

Data Flow

Interview Answers (answers.yaml)
        |
        v
  [generate command]  <-- doctrine templates, mission config
        |
        v
charter.yaml
  governance:    <-- hand-authored, preserved byte-for-byte by generate
  directives:    <-- hand-authored, preserved byte-for-byte by generate
  activated_*:   <-- hand-authored, preserved byte-for-byte by generate
  catalog:       <-- REFRESHED every run (doctrine reference manifest)
  metadata:      <-- REFRESHED every run (generation timestamp)
        |
        v
  [context command]  at each workflow action
        |
        v
    Text injected into agent prompt

charter.md sits beside this flow as a hand-authored (or agent-authored, e.g. via /spec-kitty.charter's chat flow) companion — generate never writes it, and it is never read back in.

How Charter.yaml Sections Are Populated

governance and directives deserialize straight into the existing GovernanceConfig / DirectivesConfig models — the same shapes the old governance.yaml / directives.yaml used, now nested inside charter.yaml instead of living in separate files:

governance:
  testing:
    min_coverage: 90              # Minimum test coverage %
    tdd_required: false           # TDD mandatory
    framework: <project-runner>   # Test framework / runner
    type_checking: "<project-type-checker>" # Type checker
  quality:
    linting: "<project-linter>"   # Linter
    pr_approvals: 1               # Required approvals before merge
    pre_commit_hooks: false       # Pre-commit hooks required
  commits:
    convention: conventional      # Commit convention (or null)
  performance:
    cli_timeout_seconds: 2.0      # Max CLI command duration
    dashboard_max_wps: 100        # Max work packages dashboard displays
  branch_strategy:
    main_branch: main             # Primary branch
    dev_branch: null              # Development branch (optional)
    rules: []                     # Branch naming/protection rules
  doctrine:
    selected_paradigms: []        # Active paradigm IDs
    selected_directives: []       # Active directive IDs
    available_tools: []           # Active tool IDs
    template_set: null            # Mission template set
    authority_paths: []           # Directories surfaced as required reading
    governance_references: []     # Supporting external governance documents
  enforcement: {}                 # Enforcement policy by domain
directives:
  - id: DIR-001                 # Auto-generated or custom ID
    title: "Short title"        # First 50 chars
    description: "Full text"    # Full description
    severity: warn              # error (blocks), warn (displayed), info (logged)
    applies_to: [implement, review]  # Actions where directive fires

There is no keyword-classified prose parser any more — the old "sync" extraction that scanned charter.md headings and regex-matched values like 90%+ coverage is retired. Populate these sections directly (by hand, or through the interview → charter generate bootstrap path) instead of writing prose you expect a parser to interpret.

Content-Hash Freshness (not hash-based staleness)

charter.yaml is the sole content-hash input (content_hash_files) for the bundle's freshness signal — a SHA-256 over the file itself. There is no charter.md-hash staleness check any more: metadata intentionally carries no self-referential charter_hash field (a hash of charter.yaml cannot live inside charter.yaml). charter sync is retained only for canonical-root resolution and back-compat call sites — it performs no extraction and always reports synced=False.

How Context Gets Injected Into Workflow Actions

When you run /spec-kitty.specify, /spec-kitty.plan, /spec-kitty.implement, or /spec-kitty.review, the runtime automatically calls spec-kitty charter context --action <action>. The returned text is injected into the agent prompt.

Three context modes:

First-load state is tracked in .kittify/charter/context-state.json. Each action (specify, plan, implement, review) has an independent first-load timestamp.

Doctrine Artifact Kinds

Doctrine organizes knowledge into 8 artifact kinds. Each kind has a dedicated repository in DoctrineService, follows built-in -> org -> project loading, and is accessible programmatically or via CLI.

Directives — Numbered project rules that constrain agent behavior. Each directive has a severity (error, warn, info), an applies_to scope listing which actions it fires on, and may reference tactics. Directives are the what you must do layer.

directive = service.directives.get("DIRECTIVE_034")
# directive.title → "Test-First Development"
# directive.severity → "warn"
# directive.applies_to → ["implement", "review"]
# All directives: service.directives.list_all() or read src/doctrine/directives/built-in/

Tactics — Reusable implementation approaches that describe how to do something. Tactics cover testing (TDD, ZOMBIES, acceptance-test-first), domain modeling (bounded context, aggregate boundaries), refactoring (strangler fig, extract class), review (intent-and-risk-first), and planning (problem decomposition, eisenhower). The shipped set includes a refactoring sub-catalog.

tactic = service.tactics.get("tdd-red-green-refactor")
# tactic.title, tactic.description, tactic.steps

Paradigms — High-level development philosophies that group related tactics and directives. A paradigm (e.g., domain-driven-design) declares which tactics it recommends. Paradigms are selected during the charter interview and scope which tactics appear in governance context.

paradigm = service.paradigms.get("domain-driven-design")
# paradigm.tactics → ["bounded-context-identification", ...]

Styleguides — Language- or domain-specific writing and coding style rules. Applied when the charter's languages_frameworks answer matches the styleguide's target language.

styleguide = service.styleguides.get("python-conventions")

Toolguides — Operational guidance for specific tools. Teaches agents how to use git, the project's test runner, diagramming tools, etc. within the project's governance constraints.

toolguide = service.toolguides.get("efficient-local-tooling")

Procedures — Multi-step workflow primitives with prerequisites and ordered steps. Procedures are the reusable building blocks that step contracts delegate to. They describe a complete mini-workflow (e.g., "refactoring", "test-first-bug-fixing", "situational-assessment").

procedure = service.procedures.get("refactoring")
# procedure.steps → ordered list of actions
# procedure.prerequisites → what must be true before starting

Agent Profiles — Role definitions with 6 sections: context_sources, purpose, specialization, collaboration, mode_defaults, and initialization_declaration. Relationship fields such as specializes_from are not profile fields; lineage belongs in the doctrine DRG. Profiles support weighted matching against task context (DDR-011 algorithm).

profile = service.agent_profiles.get("implementer")
# profile.purpose.mandate → what this agent is responsible for
# profile.specialization.boundaries → what it should not do

# Or resolve the best match for a task:
best = service.agent_profiles.find_best_match(task_context)

spec-kitty agent profile list
spec-kitty agent profile show implementer

Step Contracts — Structured action definitions that link public actions (specify, plan, implement, review) to doctrine artifacts via DelegatesTo. Each contract defines ordered steps; each step may delegate to a tactic, directive, or procedure by kind and candidate list.

contract = service.mission_step_contracts.get("implement")
for step in contract.steps:
    if step.delegates_to:
        # Load the referenced doctrine artifact
        artifact = getattr(service, step.delegates_to.kind + "s").get(
            step.delegates_to.candidates[0]
        )

Discovering Available Artifacts

There is no doctrine list or doctrine show CLI command. Use the programmatic DoctrineService API or read artifact YAML files directly:

from doctrine.service import DoctrineService
service = DoctrineService(shipped_root, project_root)

# List or inspect artifacts by kind
directive = service.directives.get("DIRECTIVE_034")
tactic = service.tactics.get("tdd-red-green-refactor")
paradigm = service.paradigms.get("<paradigm-id>")
# Shipped artifacts: src/doctrine/<kind>/built-in/
# Project-local overrides: .kittify/<kind>/

To validate project-layer artifacts:

spec-kitty doctrine validate .kittify/

To list registered mission types:

spec-kitty doctrine mission-type list

To list agent profiles:

spec-kitty agent profile list

Shipped artifacts live in src/doctrine/<kind>/built-in/. Project-local overrides live in .kittify/<kind>/. Two-source loading merges both, with project artifacts taking precedence on field-level merge.

Template sets (from src/doctrine/missions/):

• software-dev-default — Core development workflow
• plan-default — Goal-oriented planning
• documentation-default — Documentation creation (Divio)
• research-default — Research and evidence gathering

Default tool registry: spec-kitty, git

Interview Profiles

Minimal (8 questions — fast bootstrap):

Comprehensive (11 questions — adds 4 more):

answers.yaml Schema

schema_version: "1.0.0"
mission: "software-dev"
profile: "minimal"
answers:
  project_intent: "..."
  languages_frameworks: "..."
  testing_requirements: "..."
  quality_gates: "..."
  review_policy: "..."
  performance_targets: "..."
  deployment_constraints: "..."
  # comprehensive only:
  documentation_policy: "..."
  risk_boundaries: "..."
  amendment_process: "..."
  exception_policy: "..."
selected_paradigms:
  - "<project-paradigm>"
selected_directives:
  - "<project-directive>"
available_tools:
  - "spec-kitty"
  - "git"
  - "<project-tool>"

Step 1: Check Current State

spec-kitty charter status --json

Reports synced or stale, current and stored hashes, library doc count, and per-file sizes. governance/directives are always read live from charter.yaml — a stale report here does not mean governance config is out of date; it is a legacy staleness signal, not a gate on correctness.

Step 2: Discover the Charter Change

For agent-mediated governance setup and revision, the preferred discovery surface is the chat itself, not the CLI questionnaire.

Recommended flow:

1. Inspect the repo quickly.
2. If a charter already exists, listen for the new guidance the human-in-command is flagging: a charter addition, course correction, observed agent failure, desired norm, or policy change. Ask only the minimum follow-up needed to encode it precisely.
3. If no charter exists or the user asks to start over, ask a short targeted governance interview in chat.
4. Synthesize .kittify/charter/interview/answers.yaml directly.
5. Run spec-kitty charter generate --from-interview --json.

Use the CLI interview only as a fallback when the user explicitly wants the CLI prompt loop or wants deterministic defaults.

CLI defaults path (fallback only):

spec-kitty charter interview --mission-type software-dev --profile minimal --defaults --json

CLI comprehensive path (fallback only):

spec-kitty charter interview --mission-type software-dev --profile comprehensive

Key flags: --profile minimal|comprehensive, --defaults, --json, --selected-paradigms, --selected-directives, --available-tools. See references/charter-command-map.md for all flags.

Output: .kittify/charter/interview/answers.yaml

Step 3: Generate the Charter

spec-kitty charter generate --from-interview --json

Key flags: --mission-type, --template-set, --force, --from-interview, --json.

Generation refreshes charter.yaml's catalog and metadata sections deterministically. governance/directives/activation/overrides are preserved byte-for-byte through the shared round-trip merge (bootstrapped from a legacy triad only the first time charter.yaml is created). charter.md is never written by this command.

Output: .kittify/charter/charter.yaml (refreshed sections).

To commit the generated charter inputs, use:

spec-kitty safe-commit --message "chore: generate project charter" \
  .kittify/charter/interview/answers.yaml \
  .kittify/charter/charter.yaml \
  .gitignore

Step 4: Load Context for Workflow Actions

Do not preload all action contexts after generation.

The runtime calls context automatically during slash commands. Manual invocation is useful only for debugging one immediate action, and should avoid consuming first-load state:

spec-kitty charter context --action specify --json --no-mark-loaded

Load context iteratively at the action boundary, not as part of charter setup.

Step 5: Manual Edits to charter.yaml

Edit charter.yaml's governance: or directives: sections directly — there is no separate sync step. The next charter context call reads the file as-is.

spec-kitty charter sync --json   # retained for back-compat; always a no-op

charter sync no longer extracts anything from charter.md. It always reports synced=False / files_written=[], regardless of --force.

Programmatic Doctrine Access (DoctrineService)

DoctrineService is the single entry point for programmatic access to all doctrine artifacts. It lazily instantiates repositories on first access.

from doctrine.service import DoctrineService

service = DoctrineService(shipped_root, project_root)

Available Repositories

Common Repository Operations

All repositories share a consistent pattern:

# List all artifacts of a kind
all_tactics = service.tactics.list_all()

# Get a specific artifact by ID
tactic = service.tactics.get("tdd-red-green-refactor")

# Save a project-local artifact (procedures, step contracts)
service.procedures.save(my_procedure)

Agent Profile Resolution

Agent profiles support weighted context-based matching. When the runtime needs to assign an agent to a task, it resolves the best profile:

from doctrine.agent_profiles.profile import TaskContext

context = TaskContext(
    language="python",
    framework="typer",
    file_paths=["src/specify_cli/cli.py"],
    keywords=["cli", "testing"],
)

profile = service.agent_profiles.find_best_match(context)
# profile.purpose.mandate → what this agent is responsible for
# profile.specialization.boundaries → what it should not do
# profile.initialization_declaration → startup context text

Profile lineage is represented by DRG edges, not a specializes_from field on profile YAML. Language-specific profiles can still be related to base roles in the DRG and resolved through profile matching.

Action-Scoped Doctrine via Action Indices

Each mission action (specify, plan, implement, review) has an action index that lists which doctrine artifacts are relevant to that step:

from doctrine.missions.action_index import load_action_index

index = load_action_index(missions_root, "software-dev", "implement")
# index.directives → ["TEST_FIRST"]
# index.tactics → ["tdd-red-green-refactor", "zombies-tdd"]
# index.procedures → ["implementation-handoff"]

The charter context builder uses these indices internally. When you call spec-kitty charter context --action implement, only the doctrine artifacts listed in the implement action index are included.

MissionStepContract: Structured Action Contracts

Step contracts define the structure of each public action and link to doctrine artifacts via DelegatesTo:

contract = service.mission_step_contracts.get("implement")
for step in contract.steps:
    if step.delegates_to:
        # step.delegates_to.kind → ArtifactKind (e.g., "tactic")
        # step.delegates_to.candidates → ["tdd-red-green-refactor", ...]
        pass

This is the bridge between the mission execution surface and the doctrine knowledge layer. Step contracts say what to do; doctrine artifacts say how.

Iterative Context Loading Pattern

Agents should load doctrine context iteratively, not all at once. The architecture supports this through depth-controlled context and per-artifact retrieval.

The Pattern

1. At session init: Resolve agent profile. Load initialization_declaration.
2. At each step boundary: Call charter context --action <action>. First call gets bootstrap (depth-2), subsequent calls get compact (depth-1).
3. Mid-step, when guidance needed: Pull specific tactic or directive by ID through DoctrineService.
4. Never: Load the full doctrine catalog into prompt context.

Why This Matters

Each doctrine artifact consumes tokens. Loading all directives, tactics, paradigms, and styleguides at session start wastes context on artifacts that are irrelevant to the current action. Action indices exist specifically to scope which artifacts matter for each step.

When Doctrine Constrains Runtime

Doctrine constrains runtime behavior when the charter has been generated and the agent is executing a workflow action (specify, plan, implement, review). The specific constraints come from the project's own charter — load them with spec-kitty charter context --action <action> --json rather than assuming fixed policy values.

Doctrine does NOT constrain when:

• The user works outside a mission.
• No charter has been generated.
• The action is not a workflow action (specify, plan, implement, review).

Governance Anti-Patterns

1. Editing charter.yaml's generated sections — catalog and metadata are overwritten by charter generate on every run. Edit governance/directives/activation/overrides instead — those are preserved byte-for-byte.
2. Expecting charter.md edits to change runtime policy — the runtime never parses charter.md. Edit charter.yaml for policy changes; charter.md is a curated companion only.
3. Skipping the interview — produces generic defaults; the charter is most valuable with project-specific decisions.
4. Running charter sync expecting an effect — it is retained for back-compat call sites only and always no-ops. There is no required post-edit step after changing charter.yaml by hand.
5. Legacy path assumptions — canonical path is .kittify/charter/charter.yaml, not .kittify/memory/ and not a governance.yaml/directives.yaml/references.yaml triad.
6. Upfront context dump — loading all doctrine at session start wastes tokens and dilutes relevance. Use action-scoped loading and pull specific artifacts on demand.

See references/doctrine-artifact-structure.md for the full anti-pattern table.

References

• references/charter-command-map.md -- Full CLI command reference with all flags and output fields
• references/doctrine-artifact-structure.md -- File layout, authority classes, and data flow