| name | m-sdd-constitution |
| description | SDD phase 1 — establish project principles, conventions, and guardrails that gate every later phase. Writes .sdd/constitution.md. Triggers: sdd constitution, project constitution, sdd principles, define guardrails, project conventions doc, establish standards. |
SDD — Constitution
TL;DR — Discover existing conventions (0) → elicit/derive principles (1) → write .sdd/constitution.md & get approval (2) → route (3 — no marking step: status derives from the file). Read <skills-root>/m-sdd/_shared.md first.
The constitution is advisory context, not an enforced gate: every phase loads it and must respect it, and m-sdd-analyze checks all artifacts against it (see _shared.md Rule 2). It is project-level (one per project), not per-feature.
Phase 0 — Preflight
- Read
<skills-root>/m-sdd/_shared.md.
source <skills-root>/m-sdd/sdd-lib.sh; root="$(pwd)"; ensure scaffold: sdd_scaffold "$root".- Discover: scan the project for existing standards —
AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md, README, CONTRIBUTING, lint/format config, existing docs/ conventions. Reuse them; do not invent rules that contradict the repo.
Phase 1 — Draft
- Start from
.sdd/templates/constitution-template.md.
- Fill Principles, Conventions, Guardrails, Decision rules from what you discovered. Ask the user only for gaps you cannot infer (one question at a time).
- Among the Principles, explicitly settle the testing policy (mandatory vs.
expected coverage) —
m-sdd-tasks/m-sdd-analyze read it to decide whether a
missing test is blocking. If the user has no preference, record "test coverage
expected, not blocking" so analyze defaults soft.
- Keep it binding and specific — every line should be something a later phase can be checked against.
Phase 2 — Write
- Save the filled document to
$root/.sdd/constitution.md.
- Show the user the result and get explicit approval (this is a gate).
Phase 3 — Record & route
- No marking step: constitution status derives from the file — once
$root/.sdd/constitution.md is non-empty, every feature (existing and future)
reads constitution: done automatically. To skip it project-wide instead:
sdd_set_phase "$root" "<any-id>" constitution skipped.
- If there is an active feature, route to
m-sdd-specify; otherwise tell the user
to create one via the m-sdd skill (new "<feature>").
