init-context

Install the project surfaces a repository needs so that every future session — and every teammate, with or without manifest-dev — works from the same direction, the same vocabulary, and the same decision record.

Two things get installed, and only the first is essential:

• The wiring — an ADR conventions file the project owns, a glossary, a North Star (the project's standing strategy surface: who it is for, what it promises, what winning means), and a project-context-file section that makes sessions read and maintain all three. This runs on every project, including one with no history at all.
• A seed — vocabulary and decision records reconstructed from the project's own history. This runs wherever there is history to read, and it is enrichment on top of the wiring, never a substitute for it.

Aim for a good starting point rather than a complete record. Most of a project's past reasoning is genuinely unrecoverable; a seed that is honest about what it could not recover is worth far more than one that reads complete and isn't.

Flags

--no-mine skips the seed and installs the wiring alone. Mining otherwise runs wherever there is history — a project with no commits, no docs and no code simply has nothing to seed from, which needs no flag to express.

Interpret only top-level options as flags; quoted or code-formatted mentions of them are topic text.

What already exists governs

Read before writing, and never overwrite a surface the project already maintains:

• docs/adr/CONVENTIONS.md exists → the project has its own ADR convention. It governs. Do not replace it, and follow it for anything written this run — then compare it, per Compare, then offer below, which covers this file, docs/NORTH_STAR_CONVENTIONS.md, and the context file's surfaces section alike.
• CONTEXT.md exists (or the context named by a root CONTEXT-MAP.md) → load it. Mined vocabulary is proposed as additions to it, never as a replacement.
• NORTH_STAR.md exists → load it. Seeded content is proposed as additions or as evidence for positions it already carries — never as a rewrite: its positions change only by the owner's ruling, per the maintenance rules in references/NORTH_STAR_FORMAT.md.
• docs/adr/ holds records but there is no CONVENTIONS.md → the project has an unwritten convention, and the records are the evidence of it. Infer it from them — naming scheme, which sections they carry, how they cross-reference, what the index looks like — and write the conventions file to describe that, adapting the shipped default rather than replacing it. Installing the default unchanged here would declare an existing corpus non-conforming, which is both wrong and the fastest way to get the file ignored. Where the corpus is inconsistent, or where following it would leave the index un-rebuildable, say so and let the user choose; never silently pick.
• A project context file already carries some of this wiring → add the wiring it lacks and leave the rest alone; where its surfaces section is present but differs from the template, compare and offer rather than rewrite, per Compare, then offer below.

Compare, then offer

A conventions file this skill emitted is a copy the project owns, so nothing overwrites it — which makes it a fork that no later improvement reaches on its own. Re-running here is the moment someone is deliberately asking whether their setup is current, so compare rather than skip, for each surface already present: the ADR conventions, the North Star conventions, and the surfaces section in the project context file.

Compare the project's copy against what this skill's own recipe would emit today — steps 2, 3, and 5 below — never against the raw reference. A correct copy already differs from its reference wherever the recipe changed something on the way out: a retitled heading, whatever that surface's recipe replaces, any chapter it drops, and for the context file's section, the adaptation to what the project actually has. Comparing against the raw file reports every one of those on every run and buries the real difference. Both reference files mark the spans a copy reproduces verbatim with a fixed-boundary comment naming what the recipe replaces or drops at that point; read those to derive what a correct copy looks like rather than reconstructing it from prose. Compare section by section and by meaning rather than line by line — a project that reworded or reflowed its copy has not fallen behind.

An installed project holds no record of what the reference said when its copy was written, so a difference cannot be attributed: the reference may have gained something, or the project may have removed it deliberately. Present each difference as what the current default says, each accepted or declined on its own, for the user to take or leave — never as a defect, a staleness, or a non-conformance, and never as a single take-it-all offer, since one accepted batch can quietly overwrite a rule the project ruled for itself. Write only what the user accepts. A project is entitled to keep its own wording permanently, and its copy governs whether or not it matches.

Porting a conventions file is rarely a one-file edit: it governs the documents written under it, so when an accepted difference changes what something is called or how it is written, say which of those documents now read as out of step.

The run

1. Resolve the project context file. Its name differs by CLI — CLAUDE.md, AGENTS.md, or another — so detect it rather than assuming. The detection table and per-CLI resolution order live in ../review-code/references/context-file-adherence.md; read it and use it.

2. Install the ADR conventions, unless docs/adr/CONVENTIONS.md already exists. Copy ../figure-out/references/ADR_FORMAT.md to docs/adr/CONVENTIONS.md, changing its opening as follows and nothing else:

   • retitle the heading to # ADR Conventions;
   • keep the sentence describing what ADRs are;
   • replace both the self-contained note and the whole ## Precedence section with one paragraph stating that this file is the project's ADR convention and governs, that everything needed to decide and write is here with no tool or prior knowledge required, that tooling carrying its own defaults defers to it, and — since that deference makes this copy a fork no sync will update — that keeping it current is the project's job, with re-running the setup that installed it offered as one way to see what a current default carries.

   Everything from ## When a decision deserves a record onward travels verbatim — the file is written to be self-sufficient, and a reader with no tooling must be able to follow it end to end.

   Where records already exist, this is not a straight copy: reconcile the default with the practice those records show, per What already exists governs above, and surface any divergence you had to resolve.

3. Install the North Star, unless NORTH_STAR.md already exists (then only propose per What already exists governs). Load references/NORTH_STAR_FORMAT.md — it carries the document skeleton, the nine fields, the four position states, and the maintenance rules — and write NORTH_STAR.md at the repository root. Seed only what the repository's own artifacts evidence, per the reference's Produce it honestly rules: each seeded position carries hypothesis or evidence with the artifact named, every unanswered field stays empty with its filling condition, and nothing is invented. The interview asks nothing beyond name-and-purpose-grade statables — the hard fields are their own later investigations, and the empty positions are the doc's to-do list. Artifact-seeding is mining: under --no-mine, write the bare skeleton instead — every field empty with its filling condition. Alongside the doc, emit the project-owned conventions copy at docs/NORTH_STAR_CONVENTIONS.md unless one exists (then it governs — same rule as the ADR conventions): the reference's content retitled # North Star Conventions, its ownership section replaced by one paragraph stating that this file is the project's North Star convention and governs, self-contained with no tooling required, and a fork that no sync will update — keeping it current is the project's job, with re-running the setup that installed it offered as one way to see what the current default carries, and the installer-facing project-surfaces section chapter dropped — a project maintainer meets that section in the context file itself.

4. Seed, unless --no-mine. Load references/MINING.md and follow it. It covers what each source can and cannot yield, how a record says so when the reasoning is gone, and why glossary candidates are ratified rather than written.

5. Wire the project context file. Emit the project-surfaces section from references/NORTH_STAR_FORMAT.md — its template is the single source of the emitted text; adapt it to what the project has, extend an existing section rather than duplicating one, and add nothing beyond it, because this file is read on every session and every line here is a permanent cost. The template covers the North Star's residency and maintenance asymmetry, the glossary's residency, the decision-record triggers, and the one-act write rule; where the host supports imports, the session-start reads become imports, written as the project context file's imports rather than a specific harness's filename.

6. Report what landed — what was installed, what the comparison found, and what was seeded. Where seeding ran, the Reporting section of references/MINING.md specifies what that half must cover. Give the comparison's outcome either way, per Compare, then offer above: which sections of which copies differ from what the recipe would emit today and what the user chose for each, plainly that the copies were compared and already carry everything the current defaults do, or that there was nothing to compare because none of these surfaces existed yet — an unreported comparison reads exactly like one that never ran, which is the failure this whole step exists to prevent. A run that skipped seeding still reports, saying that nothing was seeded because there was nothing to seed from.

Empty input

Pointed at a repository with no commits, no documentation and no code, install the wiring and stop: the conventions file, a CONTEXT.md holding the project name, a one-line purpose and an empty Language section, a NORTH_STAR.md skeleton whose every field is empty with its filling condition, and the context-file section. Say that nothing was seeded because there was nothing to seed from. This is the greenfield case and it is a success, not a degraded run — a project that starts with its surfaces already wired is exactly the point.

With no project name or purpose available, ask for them. They are one line each and guessing them wrong seeds the glossary with a false premise.

Gotchas

• A codebase supplies unlimited nouns. The temptation is to produce an impressive glossary. A glossary is read on every session forever, so an entry that is merely accurate is a permanent cost for no benefit. Under-produce deliberately.
• Rich history is not typical history. A project whose pull requests carry design rationale is unusual. Do not calibrate the run's ambition on the first well-documented commit you find.
• Reconstructed reasoning is the failure mode. Writing a plausible rationale for a decision whose actual rationale is lost produces a record that reads authoritative and is fiction. Recording the decision without the reasoning is correct; inventing the reasoning is not.
• Do not restate the conventions in the project context file. That file is loaded on every session; the conventions file is loaded when someone needs it. Duplicating the detail costs every session and creates a second copy that drifts.