Example project — Frond is not real.

Authored demo content for a fictional plant-care app, rendered by the same parsers and held to the same invariants as a real project's dashboard. This is the system in use, three months in.

Glossary

The system's terms, defined once and used consistently everywhere — docs, boards, and these pages.

The work

How it is divided, and who does it

Phase
the work unit: any chunk of work run through the rituals, in exactly one mode. Opens as a board, closes by distill + delete.
Mode
a phase's flavor. The mode sets the ritual's focus, the board's template, the orient set, and the touch bands; how heavy a phase runs is its board's Levels line. A board's mode: names one:
product
builds the thing.
system
tends the rules.
side
sweeps the small stuff.
queue-shaping
shapes what's next.
Kind
the shape of one session: what it reads, what it does, what it leaves behind, and the level it runs at, with its own open and close. A phase is a board passing through kinds in order, and the mode sets the sequence (§ The phase pipeline). Earned by recurrence, never declared for symmetry — the test lives in § Adjustments, each kind's opening line in § Session starters. The kinds, by the mode that runs them:
open
opens a phase: verifies the seed, agrees scope, writes the board.
build
builds a standalone phase and hosts its walkthrough.
basic layer
builds the first pass of every surface in a run, and stops at basic.
survey
walks a whole run with the PO, building nothing.
deepen
makes one settled surface good.
close
reads the phase cold from its documents and runs the close, always in a fresh chat.
sweep
a side phase working several tracker items.
research
a side phase whose deliverable is understanding, landed as a doc.
upgrade
a system phase taking in the template's changes, in a project built from it (§ The upgrade kind).
Level
the capability a chat runs at, fixed at chat open and never changed mid-chat. Named in the project's own tier words, never as a model — the tier→model mapping lives in the project's briefing file. A board's Levels line names one per kind, and that splits the phase, a chat per kind; a board without one is collapsed, its whole arc one chat.
Session
one chat, holding one capability level fixed at open (§ The phase pipeline). One phase per session is the strong default, not a law: a phase survives a force-ended chat, and a fresh session picking its board back up is continuation, not error-recovery. Names itself when its title is known — Phase name · mode collapsed, kind · Phase name · mode in a split phase — with each title recorded on the board.
Seam
where a split phase changes chats: one kind's close, then the next kind's open. The outgoing chat commits the board, sets it waiting, advances stage:, pushes, and hands over the next kind's opening line, so crossing one takes a sentence. A collapsed board runs its kinds in one chat and has none (§ The phase pipeline).
Kickoff
the one-time bootstrap that runs before the mode loop: it writes the strategy shelf (rather than orienting against it) and opens all ground because it's creating everything. Not a mode — the ignition. See § The Kickoff.
Queue-shaping
the fourth mode: the phase that captures an idea and its context as a row + seed — adding, splitting, reordering or dropping queue rows when no phase's own open or close is doing it. A two-tier orient, one chat that never splits, done with the PO. See § The queue-shaping phase.
PO
the product owner: the human the work is done with and for. Every close ritual hands off to the PO; walkthroughs are driven by the PO. In a solo project, that's you wearing the reviewer hat.

The documents

Where it is written down

Board
a phase's worklist and running record while open, in phases/, created from its mode's template. Scale varies by mode: product boards are heavy (workstreams + a walkthrough sibling); side boards are light (the tracker items pulled in); system boards fit the friction; queue-shaping boards are a few lines. Always tier: working while open; distilled and deleted at close — product phases leave a compact record.
Seed
a queued phase's accumulation space, one file in planning/queued/ for any mode: a pitch, dated notes, what is settled and what is still open, candidate scope, refs — never tasks. Folds into the board at phase open and is deleted.
Queue
the ROADMAP's What's Next: upcoming planned work of any mode, one mode-tagged list, every row carrying a seed. A staging area, not a gate. Each phase maintains its own row: removed at open, written as the work names it or at close.
Walkthrough
a collaborative review doc: "Open for your call" (O) + "Worth verifying" (V) points, passed one by one with the PO before the phase can close. Every product and system phase runs one. Only the agent's own calls become O items, and a resolved one leaves the list for the Decisions log — so the list shows what still needs the PO, never what already got their answer. A working surface: consumed at close and deleted with the board, never archived.
Mold
a template a doc is cut from, its filename led by _: a board mold per mode, and one each for the walkthrough and the seed. A new doc inherits its mold's sections, so a change to a mold reaches every doc cut after it (§ Adjustments), and each mold explains its own use in one card at its top (§ A mold explains itself in one card).
Tracker
one of the standing lists holding candidates — quick, lean task notes waiting between phases. Phases pull items at open (a side phase usually pulls several — a sweep) and move the rows at close. Each holds one stance:
punch list
known small fixes, 30 minutes or less (P##).
Open Questions log
unanswered questions blocking future work (§N).
Future Considerations
known directions, trigger pending (FC##).

The rules

When steps run, and what may change

Ritual
a named set of steps bound to a trigger: a mode's opening steps (orient + touch-check included), during-rules, and closing steps — and not phase-only: session start, session end, and push run rituals too (§ The parts). No phase is ritual-free.
Trigger
the moment a ritual fires. Bind a ritual to a trigger by writing its steps where the person acting on it will read them (§ The parts). A Future Consideration's trigger is the word's other sense: the event that promotes it out of its tracker (§ The Planning Trackers). The ritual moments, each with what it fires:
phase open
the mode's opening ritual.
phase close
the mode's closing ritual.
session start
reading the briefing, which is that ritual.
session end
committing and pushing the open board.
push
the publish.
kickoff
the run-once bootstrap.
Touch bands
a mode's editing tiers. Bands gate pens, not eyes: reading is never gated. Each mode maps its docs onto them:
home ground
edit freely, per the board.
careful
update deliberately when the work bears on it, never in passing.
gated
another mode's ground: suggest, don't edit.
Canon diff
the ratification gate at every close: before its board is deleted, a phase walks the PO through every change it made to bedrock- and commitments-tier docs (CLAUDE.md included). Runs inside the system and side phases' verification handoff and as its own step before the product phase's distill-and-delete.
Tier
how guarded a doc is: what it takes to change it. Docs sink toward bedrock by surviving; reopening a settled one takes a structured challenge.
bedrock
the settled vision. Changed only by a structured challenge.
commitments
strategy, references, feature docs, the rules and the ROADMAP. Changing one is a decision.
working
boards, docs mid-revision and the trackers. Changed freely.
The law
"derived, never authored": every /system page renders from the docs at build time. To change a page, change its source doc; if they disagree, the docs win.

Source: CONTRIBUTING.md → Glossary