craft-and-care

name	craft-and-care
description	MANDATORY for all non-trivial implementation work. Use when implementing, reviewing, or validating changes in this repository and the question is how the work should be executed well. Load before choosing test scope, deciding whether specs or manifesto updates are required, running quality gates, assessing change hygiene, or checking whether a change meets the Butlers engineering bar.

Craft and Care -- Engineering Standards

The about/craft-and-care/ directory is the engineering-character pillar of the Butlers knowledge architecture. It answers WHO ARE WE WHEN WE BUILD? -- not just how to do the work, but what kind of engineer this repository expects you to be while doing it. Use it to load the engineering bar before implementing, reviewing, or validating non-trivial changes.

Five-Pillar Model

Pillar	Directory	Answers
Doctrine	about/heart-and-soul/	WHY -- vision, principles, scope
Design Contracts	about/legends-and-lore/	HOW -- RFCs defining wire-level contracts
Capability Specs	openspec/	WHAT -- normative requirements
Topology	about/lay-and-land/	WHERE -- component maps, data flow, deployment
Engineering Standards	about/craft-and-care/	WHO WE ARE WHEN WE BUILD -- engineering character in practice: implementation quality, verification, review, operability, maintainability

Current Standards Index

Read only the files relevant to your task:

#	File	Status	What it governs
0	about/craft-and-care/README.md	EXISTS	Orienting to the pillar: scope boundary, reading order, file map
1	about/craft-and-care/engineering-bar.md	EXISTS	Default-bar adoption from /th-engineering, Butlers-specific done criteria, bias additions, blocking change shapes
2	about/craft-and-care/testing-and-verification.md	EXISTS	Evidence standards, graduated test scope, final quality-gate expectations
3	about/craft-and-care/review-and-documentation.md	EXISTS	Blocking review criteria, author/reviewer obligations, same-change doc updates
4	about/craft-and-care/observability-and-operations.md	EXISTS	Diagnosability, runtime status expectations, telemetry discipline
5	about/craft-and-care/interfaces-and-dependencies.md	EXISTS	Interface evolution, compatibility discipline, dependency admission bar
6	about/craft-and-care/security-and-secrets.md	EXISTS	Secret handling, privilege boundaries, security-sensitive change triggers
7	about/craft-and-care/performance-discipline.md	EXISTS	Evidence-driven optimization rules and performance anti-patterns
8	about/heart-and-soul/development.md	EXISTS	Workflow doctrine that this pillar refines into explicit standards
9	AGENTS.md	EXISTS	Repo-specific contracts, caveats, and execution details discovered during implementation

Default Biases

The canonical default quality bar -- the nine engineering biases, the definition of done, and the change-level subskills that operationalize them (code-readability, test-rigor, dependency-hygiene, cruft-cleanup) -- lives in /th-engineering (engineering-bar subskill). This pillar adopts that bar by reference. The documents in about/craft-and-care/ record this project's standards and overrides; when they conflict with the default bar, this pillar wins.

When to Load

• Before implementing or reviewing non-trivial changes
• When deciding whether a task needs a spec, RFC, manifesto edit, or only code/tests
• When choosing test scope or final verification depth
• When checking whether a change is clean enough to merge
• When a review comment questions maintainability, quality gates, or change hygiene
• When updating repo docs, workflows, migrations, or cross-cutting contracts

How to Use

1. Start with about/craft-and-care/engineering-bar.md and then load only the specialized standards doc your task needs.
2. Cross-check about/heart-and-soul/development.md for workflow doctrine and AGENTS.md for repo-specific execution details.
3. Use Makefile and pyproject.toml only to confirm exact commands and tool configuration; do not invent alternate workflows.
4. Cross-load the other pillars as needed:
   • doctrine questions -> heart-and-soul
   • design-contract questions -> legends-and-lore
   • feature-behavior questions -> spec-and-spine
   • ownership/location questions -> lay-and-land

Mandatory Use Rule

For non-trivial implementation work, this skill is not optional. If the task requires judgment about testing, review quality, observability, compatibility, dependency hygiene, documentation, security, performance discipline, or maintainability, load this pillar.