hima-covenant

name	hima-covenant
description	Declare and audit the per-project disciplines (cadence, branching, testing, architecture, methodology) that the pluggable StageSkillMap resolves against.
stage	meta
source	base
mode	force

Purpose

Set the per-project floor every stage's skill map resolves against — cadence, branching, testing, architecture, and methodology choices declared once and audited thereafter. Forced once per project (init/update); advisory to read on every subsequent stage.

When to use

• Project init, or first time a cycle needs to resolve a stage skill and no disciplines file exists yet — this is a hard gate at that moment.
• Any time cadence, branching, testing, architecture, or methodology policy changes.
• Read-only consultation at the start of any stage thereafter (advisory, not re-forced).

Steps

• Check for an existing per-project disciplines declaration; if absent, this is a forced gate — do not proceed with stage work until it exists.
• Declare practice axes explicitly: cadence, branching model, testing policy, architecture boundary, methodology — sourced from founder statement or existing project convention, not invented defaults.
• Validate the declaration against the current schema version; keep frontmatter and code in sync (a disciplines file that contradicts the codebase is worse than none).
• On subsequent stages, read the declared disciplines and apply them as the floor — do not silently default to a different convention.
• Update the declaration (not append a parallel one) when a discipline changes.

Done when

• A disciplines file exists, schema-valid, matching what the codebase actually does.
• Every stage's skill resolution can point to this file as the floor it inherited.