descriptionHow to work in a Software Lifecycle project (the `software-lifecycle` starter pack): proposals → decisions → specs → postmortems, plus guides. Read when the project has these folders, or when asked how this project is organized. Carries the doc lifecycle, status flows, and per-folder agent behaviors so that guidance does not live inside template bodies or folder descriptions. The five workflows — frame a proposal, write a spec, record a decision, write a postmortem, review a design — each ship as their own sibling skill in this pack. Complements the platform `open-knowledge` skill; does not replace it. Software Lifecycle pack — how to work here
This project holds the doc lifecycle for an engineering team or OSS project. The flow is proposals → decisions → specs → postmortems, with guides as the how-to bucket. This skill holds the workflow so templates and folder descriptions stay clean.
This skill is pack guidance. The platform /open-knowledge skill (read/write/preview/linking/grounding rules) still governs every markdown operation — this layers the lifecycle conventions on top.
The flow
proposals/ in-flight RFC-shape design proposals
↓ accepted
decisions/ frozen ADRs (the record of what was decided)
↓ derived
specs/ implementation specs for accepted proposals
↓ when things break
postmortems/ blameless incident write-ups
guides/ how-to / onboarding / runbooks (referenced throughout)
Per-folder rules + agent behaviors
proposals/ — One file per proposal (0001-feature-name.md). Status flows draft → fcp → accepted/rejected. An accepted proposal graduates to a record in decisions/. Shape: Motivation / Design / Drawbacks / Alternatives / Unresolved questions. Agent: when a proposal sits at status: draft more than 14 days, surface it for the author to advance, park, or close.
decisions/ — Architecture Decision Records (MADR / Nygard shape). Frozen once accepted. One file per decision (NNNN-title.md); status proposed/accepted/deprecated/superseded. A new decision that supersedes an older one links back via Supersedes:. Agent: on a new decision, scan existing records touching the same subsystem and surface Supersedes: candidates before commit.
specs/ — Implementation specs derived from accepted proposals. Prefer the github/spec-kit shape: one folder per spec (specs/NNN-name/) with spec.md + plan.md + tasks.md (the pack ships all three templates). References the parent proposal. Agent: when a spec moves to status: shipped, suggest a postmortem template if the owner reports an incident in the spec's subsystem.
postmortems/ — Blameless incident write-ups, one file per incident (YYYY-MM-DD-name.md): Summary / Timeline / Root cause / What went well / Action items (Google SRE shape). Agent: surface a Related: block linking prior postmortems that share subsystems.
guides/ — How-to guides, onboarding docs, and service-bound runbooks (Diátaxis how-to). Ships guide, onboarding-guide, and runbook templates. Carries last_verified so stale guides surface in periodic reviews. Agent: when a postmortem is published, scan its action items for guide-shaped follow-ups and stub a guide pre-filled with the symptom and timeline excerpt.
The five workflows
Authoring in this project is procedural, not conventional. Each workflow ships as its own skill so it loads only when the work calls for it — reach for the one that matches the task rather than writing into a folder from scratch.
Templates
Create docs with write({ document: { path, template: "<name>" } }). Templates carry only structure (headings + frontmatter scaffold); what each section is for is described above, not repeated in the document body.