Rules Reference

The kit ships 3 rules under kit/.claude/rules/. These are the same floor spec-spine init scaffolds, so if you ran init you already have them. All are portable.

Rule	What it enforces
orchestrator-rules	Execute phased work in order; stop at human checkpoints; keep the working tree green; recompute derived artifacts before opening a PR.
governed-artifact-reads	Read compiled .derived/ artifacts only through spec-spine subcommands, never via ad-hoc jq / awk / sed / python.
adversarial-prompt-refusal	When the coupling gate fails because code and its owning spec disagree, surface the contradiction; never edit the spec just to satisfy a mechanical refresh. Waive instead, with a cited Spec-Drift-Waiver:.

These three are the behavioral backbone of the loop. orchestrator-rules makes checkpoints real stops, governed-artifact-reads keeps reads typed (so schema drift fails cleanly at the deserializer), and adversarial-prompt-refusal is the coherence guard that stops an agent from rewriting a spec to launder contradicting code.

Add a paths-scoped context rule

The upstream source also carried paths-scoped rules that auto-load documentation when an agent works inside a particular directory (a build-commands reference, a service-layer description). Those are instances of a generic pattern rather than portable content, so they are not shipped. To add one:

1. Create .claude/rules/<your-area>.md.
2. Add paths: frontmatter scoping it to a directory or file glob.
3. Document the conventions, build commands, or invariants for that area.

The rule loads automatically when an agent reads or edits a matching file. The pattern is generic; the content is yours.