Define the in-file RFC contract in docs/rfc/README.md § The file format:
the header block (`# RFC: <title>` plus a dateless Status enum
cross-checked against the lifecycle folder), the per-lifecycle body
skeleton (a Problem opener everywhere; Proposal/Alternatives considered/
Acceptance criteria/Risks in proposed/; present-tense Decision/
Consequences with proposal-era headings banned in implemented/; the
frozen proposal shape in rejected/), and a mandatory Alternatives
considered section with a date-fenced grandfather comment for pre-format
RFCs whose alternatives are not reconstructible from the record.
Enforce it with a new doc-sync gate, scripts/verify-rfc-format.ts, and
normalize all 112 RFCs to it: ~15 Status-line spellings collapse to the
enum, 29 Context openers become Problem, the 39 legacy-format XXX debt
markers are resolved and banned from reappearing, proposal-era sections
in implemented RFCs are rewritten to shipped reality (including the
web/fs/subagent seam RFCs' migration plans and test checklists, closing
the doc-tiers deferred-work item on the web seam), every RFC gains an
Alternatives considered section or the grandfather comment, and the
bilingual pair is re-mirrored and re-recorded.
Move the generated index tables out of README.md into a fully generated
docs/rfc/INDEX.md — gen-rfc-index now writes the whole file, and
verify-rfc-classification checks its freshness and rejects index-shaped
rows in the curated README — which makes room for the format contract to
live in the README front door instead of a separate FORMAT.md.
The decision record, and the first RFC written in the new format, is
docs/rfc/implemented/process/2026-07-05-uniform-rfc-format.md.
The definitive sweep (audit every AGENTS.md mention in packages/, docs/,
examples/, scripts/) found thirteen more citations of relocated policy
and two citations of rules that never existed as quoted:
- with-key policy comments (web deepseek/perplexity e2e headers) ->
docs/testing.md; real-impl-over-mock comments (acp harness, load,
stream-update specs) -> docs/testing.md; defensive-pattern quotes
(acp index.ts x3, stream-update) -> docs/defensive-patterns.md.
- md-tier repoints: real-api-e2e RFC, tool-schema-catalog RFC,
postmortem 0001 guardrail row, adding-a-package cookbook,
drop-bash-output-spill-files RFC, acp-subagent-backend RFC phrasing.
- Two false attributions dropped in favor of self-contained reasoning:
tool-todo's 'don't validate scenarios that can't happen' and the
bash-stdin-env RFC's 'Don't add features beyond what the task
requires' (neither rule ever existed under those names).
- Citations of the two 'not golden truth' doctrines stay: those bullets
survive verbatim in the root conventions.
Note: packages/support/ui-stdio readline TTY spec flakes under full
coverage on a heavily loaded box (passes standalone and passed the
same tree's coverage run minutes earlier); untouched by this stack.
Maintainer decision: the subagent seam's deferred capability vocabulary
(outputSchema/structured, toolFilter, sendMessage/resume) is
intentionally reserved — the seam advertises the full intended contract
ahead of its implementations so providers and consumers grow into a
stable shape. Moved to rejected/ with the rationale on the status line;
the consumer-evidence analysis stays as the record of what is currently
unimplemented.
Merge brought in the RFC-classification reorg and two new doc gates;
rewrite every drifted packages/<name> cross-link (Markdown link targets,
moved-README relative depths, and .ts comment paths) to the grouped paths.
Add two doc-sync/hygiene gates so the manual checks this restructure
needed become automated:
- verify-package-paths.ts: flags a packages/<path> reference (in Markdown
or a .ts comment/string) that does not resolve AND names a real package
in a segment — i.e. a stale path to a MOVED package. A path naming a
non-existent package (a forward-looking proposal) is left alone, so it
applies uniformly across proposed/implemented/rejected.
- check-workspace-constraints: assert the packages/<group>/<pkg> depth-2
shape (group dirs carry no package.json; no flat or over-nested
packages). Group names stay open; only the shape is fixed.
Add a second axis to every RFC — its class (feature, bug-fix,
simplification, architecture, process, testing) — encoded in the path
as docs/rfc/{lifecycle}/{class}/file.md. The folder is the label, so
the closed set is enforced by structure rather than a parsed field.
Two new doc-sync gates back it:
- verify-rfc-classification: every RFC sits in a valid class folder and
the README index lists it under the matching lifecycle→class heading.
- verify-doc-refs: every docs/*.md path cited in a packages|examples TS
comment resolves — closes a drift class verify-md-links can't see, and
catches the four comment refs this reorg moved.
The README gains a Classification section explaining the taxonomy and
per-class index sub-sections. A self-referential process RFC records why
the scheme is path-encoded and gated.
Tianyi Cui