spec-team-standards-governance

name	spec-team-standards-governance
description	Govern source-backed team development standards: query confirmed rules, audit health, initialize or draft evidence-based candidates, and prepare promotion/deprecation proposals. Do not restore legacy standards workflow entrypoints, skills/spec-standards/, or treat advisory candidates as hard context.

Spec Team Standards Governance

Use this standalone skill when the user asks to query, initialize, audit, propose, promote, or deprecate source-backed team development standards. It is a source-maintenance method, not a public spec-* workflow and not the retired spec-standards workflow.

When To Use / When Not To Use

• Use for standards governance work on docs/contracts/team-standards.md, docs/standards/**, candidate evidence, health audits, or promotion/deprecation proposals.
• Do not use for ordinary code/doc review, implementation, PRD/plan authoring, or workflow execution; those route to their own public spec-* workflow.
• Do not use to create, restore, or recommend legacy standards command spellings, the retired spec-standards workflow, skills/spec-standards/, or .spec-first/standards/.
• Do not turn observed, suggested, imported, conflict, confirmed-draft, replay results, or high confidence into enforceable hard context.

Hard Boundaries

• Do not create legacy standards workflow entrypoints, skills/spec-standards/ or .spec-first/standards/.
• Do not edit generated runtime mirrors such as .claude/, .codex/ or .agents/skills/.
• Standalone direct use defaults to report/proposal-only. Durable source mutation requires an active spec-work or equivalent source-edit workflow, ordinary diff review, CHANGELOG.md, and focused tests.
• Scripts or structured steps may collect deterministic/advisory facts; the LLM decides semantic applicability and promotion posture.
• Only trust=confirmed,lifecycle_state=active and scope-matched standards can become hard context. observed, suggested, imported, conflict and confirmed-draft are not enforceable.
• Confidence score is not authority. High-impact governance, conflicts and owner-unresolved rules require owner/ADR/design-note handling.

Modes

Mode	Purpose	Output	Source mutation boundary
query	Return relevant standards for a workflow slice	Filtered rule IDs, matched files, excluded reasons, fallback and limitations	read-only
init	Initialize brownfield candidate notes from explicit sources	acquisition notes, candidate patch preview, conflicts	proposal-only; V1 writes candidates only inside source-edit workflow
propose	Draft candidates from repeated issues, incidents or source refs	suggested / observed candidate cards and decision trace	proposal-only
promote	Prepare confirmed-draft or confirmed patch proposal	promotion proposal with authority tier, gates, owner status and index patch preview	actual confirmed/index writes require source-edit workflow
deprecate	Prepare lifecycle downgrade	deprecated/archive patch preview and invalidation evidence	actual lifecycle/archive writes require source-edit workflow
audit	Check standards health	advisory drift/conflict/stale-owner/no-load-all report	no blocking gate
eval/replay	Evaluate an existing acquisition run with replay, retrieval, noise and owner-edit evidence	eval cases, threshold results, limitations and promotion evidence	read-only or validation artifact; never a promotion gate by itself

Reference Loading Map

Read only the references required by the active mode. Never load every reference by default.

Scenario	Read references	Do not default-read
query	references/meta-prompt-governance.md, references/loading-and-consumption.md; read authority-tiers.md or promotion-and-conflicts.md only if conflict/tier interpretation is needed	initialization, acquisition scoring, interview or replay details
init	references/meta-prompt-governance.md, references/initialization.md, references/acquisition-quality.md, references/output-risk-profile.md	replay/golden samples, full lifecycle details
init with V2 pilot input	references/source-matrix.md, references/role-interview-playbook.md when source mix or owner questions affect acquisition quality	unrelated surface refs, replay details unless samples exist
propose	references/meta-prompt-governance.md, references/acquisition-quality.md, references/adaptive-expansion.md, references/promotion-and-conflicts.md; use references/source-matrix.md when source authority is uncertain	all standards files, unrelated surface refs
promote	references/meta-prompt-governance.md, references/authority-tiers.md, references/promotion-and-conflicts.md, references/loading-and-consumption.md	initialization playbook, broad evidence collection
deprecate	references/meta-prompt-governance.md, references/lifecycle.md, references/promotion-and-conflicts.md, references/authority-tiers.md	acquisition task pack details
audit	references/meta-prompt-governance.md, references/loading-and-consumption.md, references/lifecycle.md, references/output-risk-profile.md; for V2 ledgers read references/source-matrix.md and references/validation-and-replay.md	role interviews unless owner gaps require follow-up
eval/replay	references/meta-prompt-governance.md, references/validation-and-replay.md, references/output-risk-profile.md, evals/README.md, and only the named eval cases	init/propose/promote details not needed for the eval question

Workflow

1. Parse mode from the user request. If unclear, default to query for lookup requests and audit for health-check requests; otherwise ask one short clarification.
2. Read docs/contracts/team-standards.md.
3. For standards selection, read docs/standards/index.md before rule files. If the index is missing, stale or scope is unknown, use the fallback modes from the contract.
4. Read only mode-specific references from the loading map.
5. Produce the mode output per the Output Contract, including the mode-specific fields for the active mode; never emit a field you cannot back with source_refs_used.
6. If source edits are authorized by an outer source-edit workflow, keep writes scoped to docs/standards/**, this skill's source files, tests, docs and CHANGELOG.md; never patch runtime mirrors.

Output Contract

This section is the single source of truth for output fields. Every output includes mode; status (completed, degraded, blocked, or proposal-only); source_refs_used; fallback_mode; limitations; and next_action.

Add the fields required by the active mode:

• query / audit: matched_rule_ids, matched_files, excluded_rule_ids, uncertainty_reason.
• init / propose: candidate_ids, authority_tier, owner status, why_not_confirmed, pre-write gate result, decision_trace.
• promote / deprecate: proposal_ids, gate_results, confidence.signals, autonomy.mode, outcome, decision_trace, owner status, and the diff/source files that a source-edit workflow would update.
• eval/replay: acquisition_id, replay_case_ids, single extraction target, source anchors, evidence quality, replay status, owner-edit status, and whether samples were sufficient.

Failure Modes

Reason	Response
contract-missing	Degrade to host instructions and direct source reads; do not treat standards files as hard context
index-missing	Do not scan all docs/standards/**; ask for index creation or use explicit user-requested rule refs
scope-uncertain	Load only shared/high-priority safe summary; report uncertainty
conflict-present	Return conflict refs and owner next action; do not enforce
prewrite-gate-failed	Do not write candidate content; return report-only limitation
source-edit-not-authorized	Produce patch preview only
not-enough-sample	Record degraded eval evidence; do not claim replay/retrieval pass
owner-unavailable	Keep candidates advisory or prepare owner questions; do not infer owner approval

Non-Goals

• No CLI command, route-map entry, public workflow catalog entry or runtime mirror patch.
• No automatic rule mining to confirmed policy.
• No PR replay, retrieval eval, role interview or V2 ledger claim unless real pilot inputs exist.