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Maintainer override — suspend orchestration to edit codeArbiter itself. Env-gated (CODEARBITER_DEV=1), entry/exit logged to overrides.log.
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Based on SOC occupation classification
Exit maintainer dev mode — restore orchestration, remove the dev marker, log the exit.
The Socratic spec-refinement front of /feature, and the planning front of /sprint. Routed to BEFORE any code — it takes a one-line idea and drives it to an approved, concrete spec with testable acceptance criteria. Four gated phases — frame, refine, write, approve. No implementation and no handoff to tdd until the spec is on disk and approved; each acceptance criterion becomes one tdd Phase 1 obligation.
The only path to a commit. Routed to when the user invokes /commit or otherwise instructs codeArbiter to persist staged changes. Nine gated phases — permission, branch, classification, verification (test/lint/secrets), behavioral proof, diff review, selective stage, message, commit. Nothing reaches version control without clearing every gate; "it looks good" is not authorization.
Optional manual drift audit — report stale provenance-tracked docs (via _provenancelib drift detection across .codearbiter/.provenance/), then per stale doc offer re-scout / re-baseline / defer. Not the daily loop; commit-gate auto-heal owns routine maintenance.
The brownfield back-fill. Routed to by /create-context, and by startup when .codearbiter/CONTEXT.md lacks the <!--INITIALIZED--> body marker but source code exists. Six gated phases — pre-flight, scout dispatch, synthesis, gap interview, write, lock. Reads the existing codebase through parallel scouts, drafts every surviving project-state doc, resolves gaps with the user, and locks the project as initialized.
The banned-primitive gate. Routed to when changed code hashes, signs, encrypts, derives keys, generates security-relevant randomness, configures TLS, or imports a crypto library. Rejects broken primitives, disabled TLS verification, and home-rolled crypto; the approved-primitive list lives in security-controls.md. The auth-crypto-reviewer agent is dispatched as the reviewer.
| name | ca-dev |
| description | Maintainer override — suspend orchestration to edit codeArbiter itself. Env-gated (CODEARBITER_DEV=1), entry/exit logged to overrides.log. |
| argument-hint | [note] |
Suspends orchestration for working ON codeArbiter — skill, agent, command, and hook bodies,
ORCHESTRATOR.md, settings. Not for project work; for that, use the normal commands or
$ca-override.
Env gate — check the CODEARBITER_DEV environment variable. Not set to 1 → refuse in one
line ("dev mode requires CODEARBITER_DEV=1") and remain in orchestration. This keeps the mode a
deliberate maintainer posture, not a casual bypass.
Log entry — detect identity from git config user.email; append to
<project-root>/.codearbiter/overrides.log (append-only, >>):
[ISO-8601 timestamp] | BY: <email> | DEV: enter | NOTE: <note or —>
Marker — drop <project-root>/.codearbiter/.markers/dev-active (gitignored UI flag).
Mode — plain, direct coding assistant: no routing, no skills, no gates, no [CONFIRM-NN]
surfacing, no redirect. Persists until $ca-arbiter or a new session.
Note (#271): if another session starts in this repo while this marker is live, SessionStart no longer
unconditionally clears it out from under you — it is session-scoped now, so a concurrently-running dev
session's marker survives a different session's startup. See $ca-arbiter for the exit-path detail.
MUST refuse without CODEARBITER_DEV=1. MUST write the DEV: enter log line before suspending
orchestration. Even in dev mode, overrides.log is never rewritten — the append-only rule has no
dev exception.
$ca-override "reason".$ca-btw.