ACDD

ACDD means Agentic Contract-Driven Development. It turns an intended change into a bounded architecture contract, checks that contract against the live system, implements only the approved scope, and closes with current executable evidence. It connects existing tests, release processes, issue trackers, and review tools through profiles and repository adapters.

ACDD provides a task-delivery profile and a smaller planning profile. This guide focuses task delivery: one Markdown task document, one profile, physical evidence artifacts, and a validator. It is not a scheduler, review runtime, or agent orchestrator.

Task delivery: 5 gates, 8 checks

Gates run in order. A gate may finalize or validate as terminal only when every earlier gate is already pass or inapplicable.

The gates form one evidence chain: decide what is safe to change, freeze the required behavior and proof obligations, implement with TDD, challenge the settled change independently, then close it with current evidence.

1. Design

Define the intended outcome, architecture boundary, and a bounded plan before implementation begins.

• design-basis — explains what will change, why it matters, which systems and callers are affected, and which effects must never occur.
• plan-shape — turns that decision into small, ordered subtasks with explicit reads, writes, acceptance criteria, and dependencies.

2. Contract

Turn the approved design and its subtasks into a stable behavior and proof contract. Finalizing this gate creates one append-only source-contract bundle. Each current subtask has a checksummed part and matching binding, so changing a part and recomputing only its self-hash is rejected during Build.

• decomposition — shows that every required change belongs to one bounded subtask and that dependent work has a clear order.
• matrix — maps the affected producers, consumers, data flow, authorities, backends, reads, and writes so no relevant path is implicit.
• executable-proof — establishes a focused pre-change proof of the unresolved behavior, plus the post-fix invariant, affected dimensions, and forbidden effects. Its expected failure fixes the acceptance boundary and supplies the scope for Build's TDD test; it is not the TDD cycle itself.

Subtasks: the unit of implementation

A subtask is one bounded change slice, not a to-do item. Its writes and reads name either a declared Input or a path inside a declared directory Input. That lets several subtasks share src without repeating it, while each still names the files it changes. Its acceptance describes an observable result, and dependsOn makes execution order explicit. IDs are unique, dependencies are acyclic, and conflicting reads/writes must be serialized.

At the end of Contract, every existing subtask receives an immutable part and a matching binding in one source-contract bundle. A part captures its scope, acceptance, dependencies, replacement link, and its own hash; its binding repeats that hash under the part ID. Changing a part and recomputing only its self-hash is still rejected because its existing binding no longer matches. A later subtask is always new work, never an edit to an old part:

• Addition narrows or extends the work with its own paths and a dependsOn link to the original. Finish the original subtask's TDD Red → Green before starting the addition's Red test.
• Replacement uses supersedes. The original contract remains in the record, but its state is now derived as superseded by that one successor. A subtask has at most one direct replacement.

Register either form with acdd contract-subtask before it joins Build. The command appends a separately hashed part and its binding to the same source-contract bundle; it never edits an earlier part, Contract evidence, or receipt. Source contracts are verification records, not subtask gates or subtask receipts. A Plan-only addition or replacement does not stale a global Build, Review, or Handoff receipt; changing that receipt's actual inputs still does.

3. Build

Build carries the frozen Contract into source code. Every approved subtask has a small TDD loop around the behavior it changes. A focused automated test comes from that subtask's acceptance and forbidden effects, and runs before its production change. Red means that the real functional outcome is absent or wrong—not that setup, imports, mocks, or an unrelated assertion failed. The smallest change then makes that same test Green. A passing test for one subtask never proves another subtask's acceptance.

• runtime-and-integration — runs the repository's integrated command after the focused tests are green. It demonstrates the intended runtime behavior and the relevant integration or quality guarantees on the settled tree.

4. Review

Challenge the settled change across the task profile's parity, security, and code dimensions. The planning profile instead checks its settled set for completeness and consistency.

• independent-review — registers an external transcript. The review host selects the independent read-only sessions; it retains each response as raw JSONL, even when it has no schema. A confirmation reviewer reads the settled input and all raw output, then issues the final pass terminal. The collector records that declaration; it does not decide pass itself.

5. Handoff

Close the repository-specific work only after all prior evidence is current and terminal.

• repository-handoff — confirms required closure actions, changed derived artifacts, and the absence of unresolved blockers. Finalize also writes a process report onto the handoff bundle for provenance.

Planning profile

The planning profile creates or improves a bounded planning set. It never implements source changes.

Use the Plan and Review adapters described below. See the plan example.

11 invariants: what the validator refuses

1. Shape — receipt rows are exactly the profile gates, ordered, with coherent pending values; a declared planning profile must match; terminal rows require every earlier gate terminal. A sixth note cell is allowed only on partial or blocked rows.
2. Evidence is real — artifacts are local, checksummed, unique, single-record, and pass their declared outcome; basis evidence covers its scope; review terminals carry verdict pass; a passed handoff bundle carries a process report. Every Contract source part must have one matching binding in the same bundle.
3. Receipt binds evidence — receipt, bundle, and check fingerprints agree.
4. Receipt binds state — a receipt binds the gate's profile definition, adapter bindings, prompt fragment, and relevant inputs. It does not bind the Plan: adding or replacing a subtask alone leaves global receipts current. A stale receipt is renewed only by current evidence for that same gate; any other stale or invalid state still blocks finalization.
5. Authority — the bundle/check issuer is the gate owner, and the adapter binds exactly that gate's checks.
6. Sub-task bounded — IDs, paths inside declared Inputs, acceptance, dependencies, replacements, and write/read conflicts are valid and explicit. Every subtask after Contract has one separately hashed part and matching binding in the Contract source bundle; it cannot change silently, and exactly one successor may supersede it.
7. Review attested — review evidence has a pass verdict and distinct valid author/reviewer UUIDs that match the transcript terminal; independent execution and reviewer identity are outside the core boundary.
8. Inapplicable reasoned — a gate-level inapplicable receipt uses an allowed reason code and includes no check evidence.
9. Execution honest — outcome matches the declared command outcome; timeouts, execution errors, and reserved exits 124/127 never pass; basis evidence is held to the same honesty.
10. Discovery authentic — discovered adapters stay below the workspace root; duplicate roles and unknown active-gate bindings fail. A terminal gate also needs its one owner adapter with exact check bindings. Adapters with no gate in the active profile are ignored.
11. Review complete — the review transcript preserves every raw reviewer response. Its confirmation reviewer, also a raw session, issues the final pass terminal; it acknowledges exactly all raw sessions, declares a non-empty scope, and covers the profile's review dimensions.

Prompts and agent routing

AGENTS.md routes one active gate to one gate skill under acdd/share/skills/. Load only that check section. Build additionally loads the shared TDD procedure; Diagnose is a pre-gate helper for a defect or accepted finding, then work returns to its gate.

An adapter may add repository context with promptAppend on a check binding:

gates:
  build/v1:
    checks:
      runtime-and-integration:
        cwd: .
        argv: [uv, run, pytest, -q]
        timeoutSeconds: 900
        promptAppend: prompts/build-runtime.md

The fragment path is relative to the adapter (conventionally under .acdd/prompts/), must stay below its directory, and its SHA-256 enters the gate fingerprint. For command and basis checks, cwd stays below the workspace root and timeoutSeconds (default 300) bounds the command. A review host instead combines the base review skill and fragment, then expands its launch template. The core does not compose prompts, choose models, or replace ownership, check requirements, evidence kind, terminal policy, or an invariant.

Evidence artifacts land in the adapter's artifacts directory (.acdd/artifacts/ in a consuming repository). Successful check artifacts are immutable, gitignored runtime artifacts, required across sessions while the task is active, and prunable after the handoff gate closes — the committed document keeps every evidence block with its SHA-256 as provenance. The Contract source bundle is append-only instead: later subtasks add a hashed part and its binding without rewriting earlier rows, Contract evidence, or the Contract receipt. A failed record may leave an orphan JSONL; retrying the same --id overwrites it when that id is not yet in the document.

Install

pip install acdd
# or from this repository:
pip install .

Bundled profiles ship inside the package. After install you can pass an alias (task, plan, acdd/task/v1, acdd/plan/v1) instead of a file path.

Commands

Adapters load from the discovery scope below (not a recursive walk of every .acdd/ under the workspace). Every adapter YAML with apiVersion: acdd/adapter/v1 directly inside a selected .acdd/ root is considered. An adapter with no gate in the active profile is ignored; one that declares an active gate is indexed by role and checked strictly, including unknown bindings. Symlinked adapter files are ignored. --adapter role=path overrides a discovered entry and must also resolve below the workspace root.

# Single-repo: put adapters under .acdd/ at the workspace root.
# Profile may be a path or a bundled alias (task / plan).
uv run acdd validate task.md task

uv run acdd fingerprint task.md task --gate build/v1

uv run acdd record task.md task \
  --gate build/v1 --check runtime-and-integration --id build.runtime

# Basis evidence needs classified coverage for every input selected by its gate.
uv run acdd record task.md task \
  --gate design/v1 --check design-basis --id design.basis \
  --classified-ref docs/design.md=task

uv run acdd finalize task.md task --gate build/v1 --id build.bundle

uv run acdd contract-subtask task.md task --workspace-root . \
  --subtask newly-discovered-slice --id contract.newly-discovered-slice

uv run acdd review task.md task \
  --gate review/v1 --check independent-review --id review.independent \
  --transcript .acdd/artifacts/review.jsonl \
  --author-uuid <AUTHOR_UUID> --reviewer-uuid <REVIEWER_UUID>

# Only where the selected profile permits it.
uv run acdd finalize task.md task --gate build/v1 \
  --id build.inapplicable --status inapplicable \
  --reason-code build.no-runnable-source

acdd review registers an existing adapter-bound transcript relative to --workspace-root. It validates raw-response preservation, confirmation acknowledgement, scope, required dimensions, pass terminal, and UUID values. It does not launch reviewers, choose models, or authenticate identity; the consuming workflow owns those guarantees. See DESIGN.md for the host contract and review-host boundary.

Install adapters

Adapters are YAML files under .acdd/ with apiVersion: acdd/adapter/v1.

Discovery scope (from the document path under --workspace-root):

1. Single-repo (default) — load .acdd/ at the workspace root.
2. Project opt-in — a document under projects/<name>/ with a local .acdd/ uses only that project.
3. Unused project — a document under projects/<name>/ without .acdd/ means ACDD is not used for that document.
4. Multi-package workspace — when sibling packages already own .acdd/, discovery may load those package roots instead of walking the tree. Details are in DESIGN.md.

Task delivery needs roles task, implementation, and review. Planning needs plan and review. A Review binding is a host launch template; register the finished transcript with acdd review. Handoff records repository-handoff; finalize writes the process report onto that gate's bundle.