agentic-praxis-grimoire

ADR 0020: Structured Project Phase Defaults and Prompt Compression

Status

Accepted

Date

2026-07-22

Context

APG’s formal phases repeatedly restate repository-controlled commit, status, ADR, docs-only, scoped-test, push, remote-equality, and managed-report procedure inside top-level manager assignments. The repetition makes material deviations and authority boundaries harder to review and increases the chance that copied mechanics become stale.

The existing composing-approved-roadmap-assignments skill correctly preserves authority, acceptance, stop, and no-successor boundaries, but it treats precommit and postcommit mechanics as optional prompt modules without first loading a repository-owned structured default. APG also lacks one current owner for ordinary non-phase commit and docs-only behavior.

Decision

Adopt docs/structured-project-phase-defaults.md as APG’s project-owned convention for formal phases and ordinary non-phase work.

A formal APG phase normally has one semantic phase, one commit, a finalized exit before commit, proportional validation, authorized push and remote parity, one postcommit Git report with one associated operational record, and a hard stop before an unauthorized successor. One-commit exceptions require an explicit integration, release, correction, or partial/blocked-result reason.

Ordinary implementation testing is scoped: unit behavior receives scoped unit tests, and a changed integration boundary receives scoped integration tests. Combined, smoke/system, and complete suites are not default implementation gates. Broader tests require an explicit project, defect, testing-infrastructure, readiness, release, CI/CD, or human reason.

Outside a formal phase, commit authority permits clean atomic commits without invented phase, exit, or ADR ceremony. Docs-only work receives proportional link, identity, privacy, diff, and whitespace checks; source tests run only when the affected contract or repository requires them.

Apply one bounded behavior-bearing correction to composing-approved-roadmap-assignments. It must load the repository default, reference it once, omit redundant default mechanics, and retain deviations, phase-specific evidence, unusual scope, acceptance, stop, and successor boundaries. Missing, conflicting, release, destructive, or otherwise high-risk defaults require expanded detail.

APG framing does not become universal. A target repository’s more specific status, commit, test, or report owner replaces APG convention.

Alternatives considered

Consequences

Manager assignments become shorter when APG defaults apply, but remain independently reviewable. Prompt quality is evaluated by completeness and authority fidelity before line or byte reduction. Formal docs-only phases keep their semantic and reporting ceremony; non-phase docs-only work does not gain it.

The accepted defaults are documentation, not commit, push, publication, destructive-action, or successor authority. Current report executables retain their behavior until the separate reporting roadmap slice.

Coverage remediation, mock boundaries, and framework-specific pytest behavior remain separately owned. APG25 assigns future corrections but does not broaden those skill procedures beyond the single approved composition correction.

Deferred decisions

Defer implementation of coverage-remediation and other process-skill corrections, Python report conversion, pytest migration, ChatGPT canonical-path relocation, personal hygiene-skill transition, readiness, and v0.4 publication to separately authorized roadmap slices.