Skip to main content

Godharness logo

Godharness: Temporary Product Brief

Status: Working notes — not a Viewstone product document Date: 2026-08-05

Problem

Coding agents can enforce deterministic rules after changing code, but they do not automatically know a repository's architecture decisions, product intent, engineering practices, or the rationale behind policies. Raw documentation is easy to miss, too broad to load in full, and difficult to keep structurally healthy.

Desired Outcome

Godharness gives coding agents the right engineering context before they act. It ships a small, versioned, opinionated default suite of best practices and lets each repository add its own standards, decision records, product context, and service-specific guidance.

Product Positioning

Godharness is an agent-context and documentation-governance framework. It is related to Oh My Claude Code and Superpowers in that it supports coding-agent workflows, but its job is distinct:

  • Workflow frameworks prescribe how an agent works.
  • Godharness supplies the project-specific and default context the agent needs to make sound decisions.
  • Godlint deterministically verifies the codifiable subset in code and CI.

The family promise is:

Godharness helps agents understand the project. Godlint makes sure the project stays true to what it decided.

Relationship to Godlint

Godlint and Godharness have deliberately different authority boundaries.

Product Authority Example
Godharness Guidance before a change "Validate untrusted data at runtime boundaries."
Godlint Deterministic enforcement after a change "Do not read environment variables outside the configured boundary."

Godharness handles decisions that cannot safely be inferred from syntax:

  • product intent and non-goals;
  • architecture tradeoffs and ADRs;
  • testing philosophy and recovery strategy;
  • domain vocabulary and service ownership;
  • instructions for evaluating ambiguous cases.

Godlint handles objective, explainable checks against source and workflows. Godharness must not claim that injecting guidance proves compliance; Godlint, tests, review, and other deterministic checks remain the proof mechanisms.

Version 1 Scope

Godharness v1 is a local-first, installable CLI with Markdown and Git as the source of truth. It has no user interface and no Obsidian integration in v1.

Recommended suite

recommended@1 ships a small, curated, versioned set of broadly useful standards, such as:

  • testing and verification;
  • error handling;
  • small focused units;
  • security and secrets hygiene;
  • configuration boundaries;
  • CI expectations;
  • documentation and decision-record practices.

The suite is not injected wholesale. The resolver selects a tiny universal core plus standards relevant to the task and changed paths. Suites must remain small enough that their context is useful rather than generic noise.

Repository context

Repositories compose the default suite with their own Markdown standards, architecture decisions, product context, playbooks, and service-specific guidance. Project content can refine the default guidance without copying it.

Illustrative configuration:

version: 1
suites: [recommended@1]

standards:
  - docs/engineering/**
  - docs/process/**
  - docs/architecture/**

adapters:
  codex: true
  claude-code: true
  pi: true

Commands

The initial CLI surface should be small:

godharness init
godharness check
godharness context --prompt "..."
godharness context --paths services/api/src/auth.ts
godharness doctor
  • init creates the configuration and starter standards.
  • check validates document schema, links, classification, selectors, and adapter configuration.
  • context resolves the standards and decisions relevant to a prompt or set of changed paths in a deterministic machine-readable form.
  • doctor validates local installation and adapter wiring.

Installing

  • Homebrew: brew install tomerwave/tap/godharness
  • cargo: cargo install godharness-cli
  • npm: npm install --global @godharness/cli
  • pip: pip install godharness

This repository keeps its own installed copy current automatically: .github/workflows/self-update.yml runs godharness update whenever a new version releases and commits any resulting change directly to main.

Technical Direction

Build the core in Rust.

Reasons:

  • a single fast binary works locally and in CI without Node or Bun;
  • the resolver, validator, configuration model, diagnostics, and release approach align with Godlint;
  • it supports deterministic, local-first behavior and cross-platform installs;
  • thin agent-specific adapters can call the binary and consume JSON rather than duplicating matching logic.

The existing Viewstone TypeScript harness is a useful reference implementation, not the product core. It proves three useful mechanisms:

  • prompt-keyword matching;
  • changed-path glob matching;
  • adapters for Codex, Claude Code, and Pi that inject selected context.

The extracted core should use a real YAML/frontmatter parser and schema validation rather than preserving the current hand-written parser.

Required Product Properties

  • Deterministic resolution: no LLM decides which context is mandatory.
  • Local-first: repository source and context stay local by default.
  • Markdown and Git native: standards and decisions remain reviewable and portable.
  • Explainability: users can answer "why was this injected?".
  • Versioned suites: recommended@1 remains stable when future suites change.
  • Scoped context: support universal, task, path, service, and repository scope.
  • Conflict handling: define precedence and surface contradictory standards.
  • CI validation: prevent broken links, malformed metadata, unindexed standards, stale ownership, and adapter drift.

Explicit Non-Goals for v1

  • No graphical interface, desktop application, or Obsidian integration.
  • No generic notes app or knowledge graph.
  • No vector search/RAG as the policy-selection mechanism.
  • No LLM-driven enforcement or opaque context selection.
  • No duplicate source-code linter; Godlint owns deterministic source and workflow policy.
  • No automatic invention of engineering standards.

Later Possibilities

An Obsidian-like product experience could be valuable later for authoring, exploring relationships, ownership/review dates, contradictions, and context previews. It must remain a view over the Git-backed Markdown source of truth, not replace it.

Future Godlint integration can map a finding to its relevant Godharness standard so developers receive both the deterministic violation and the decision rationale.

Risks

  • A large default suite will become generic prompt noise and be ignored.
  • Simple keyword and glob matching can over-match or miss relevant context.
  • Injecting a rule does not prove an agent followed it.
  • Project-specific standards can conflict unless precedence and ownership are explicit.
  • A UI too early would distract from the core resolution and validation loop.

Open Decisions

  • Adapter protocol and installation model for each supported agent.
  • The first Godlint-to-Godharness rationale-linking contract.
  • Conflict-reporting between two standards whose content disagrees (as opposed to resolution order, which is decided — see below).

Decided since this section was first written, with the implementation in crates/godharness-core:

  • Standard frontmatter schema and selectors: id, title, keywords, paths, must-read, supersedes, relates-to; word-boundary keyword matching; glob path matching.
  • Resolution precedence: a must-read standard always resolves regardless of prompt or changed paths; supersedes suppresses the standard it names; relates-to surfaces a neighbor alongside a match.
  • Extension model: a repository adds standards through the standards globs in godharness.yaml. Overriding an existing standard means superseding it under a new id — reusing an existing id is a duplicate-id error, not a silent override.
  • The minimal universal core every task receives: whichever standards are marked must-read.

Download files

Download the file for your platform. If you're not sure which to choose, learn more about installing packages.

Source Distributions

No source distribution files available for this release.See tutorial on generating distribution archives.

Built Distributions

If you're not sure about the file name format, learn more about wheel file names.

godharness-0.1.4-py3-none-win_amd64.whl (3.2 MB view details)

Uploaded Python 3Windows x86-64

godharness-0.1.4-py3-none-musllinux_1_2_x86_64.whl (4.6 MB view details)

Uploaded Python 3musllinux: musl 1.2+ x86-64

godharness-0.1.4-py3-none-musllinux_1_2_aarch64.whl (4.2 MB view details)

Uploaded Python 3musllinux: musl 1.2+ ARM64

godharness-0.1.4-py3-none-manylinux_2_17_x86_64.whl (4.6 MB view details)

Uploaded Python 3manylinux: glibc 2.17+ x86-64

godharness-0.1.4-py3-none-manylinux_2_17_aarch64.whl (4.4 MB view details)

Uploaded Python 3manylinux: glibc 2.17+ ARM64

godharness-0.1.4-py3-none-macosx_11_0_arm64.whl (3.7 MB view details)

Uploaded Python 3macOS 11.0+ ARM64

godharness-0.1.4-py3-none-macosx_10_12_x86_64.whl (3.9 MB view details)

Uploaded Python 3macOS 10.12+ x86-64

File details

Details for the file godharness-0.1.4-py3-none-win_amd64.whl.

File metadata

  • Download URL: godharness-0.1.4-py3-none-win_amd64.whl
  • Upload date:
  • Size: 3.2 MB
  • Tags: Python 3, Windows x86-64
  • Uploaded using Trusted Publishing? Yes
  • Uploaded via: twine/7.0.0 CPython/3.13.14

File hashes

Hashes for godharness-0.1.4-py3-none-win_amd64.whl
Algorithm Hash digest
SHA256 135d7b3b6ba1d7c2ca9feb128e5483f4bdf85a7400848775a1ea3c2bc09c2dd9
MD5 f4f1c9a36110e23962bea9a9b2a36661
BLAKE2b-256 2c81c932d33bcc1a1d6d88c56ac95162c265cff7d26fbae52deb1ea281cd63a2

See more details on using hashes here.

Provenance

The following attestation bundles were made for godharness-0.1.4-py3-none-win_amd64.whl:

Publisher: release.yml on tomerwave/godharness

Attestations: Values shown here reflect the state when the release was signed and may no longer be current.

File details

Details for the file godharness-0.1.4-py3-none-musllinux_1_2_x86_64.whl.

File metadata

File hashes

Hashes for godharness-0.1.4-py3-none-musllinux_1_2_x86_64.whl
Algorithm Hash digest
SHA256 91113425bd4ccdfab4e5c23e0e2b39b22b2dbb16fe331818ef4b199d5d61e156
MD5 d25bce462674ef83ea2fe19943a7809a
BLAKE2b-256 89aba86e2a214283e4cda751a8bceea70d782c52a99d016f2b2823f8f9c26949

See more details on using hashes here.

Provenance

The following attestation bundles were made for godharness-0.1.4-py3-none-musllinux_1_2_x86_64.whl:

Publisher: release.yml on tomerwave/godharness

Attestations: Values shown here reflect the state when the release was signed and may no longer be current.

File details

Details for the file godharness-0.1.4-py3-none-musllinux_1_2_aarch64.whl.

File metadata

File hashes

Hashes for godharness-0.1.4-py3-none-musllinux_1_2_aarch64.whl
Algorithm Hash digest
SHA256 aceae11437a9d2cf6dfea4cda1c71d7d90e58a7dc621d57ff1074fa1ec4f506b
MD5 ded4644a8bc04003a47be82962180962
BLAKE2b-256 bf6bad22810fd8e3853a7eea4ca012bf90f93ba56b0ebdde6edd647568e01a3e

See more details on using hashes here.

Provenance

The following attestation bundles were made for godharness-0.1.4-py3-none-musllinux_1_2_aarch64.whl:

Publisher: release.yml on tomerwave/godharness

Attestations: Values shown here reflect the state when the release was signed and may no longer be current.

File details

Details for the file godharness-0.1.4-py3-none-manylinux_2_17_x86_64.whl.

File metadata

File hashes

Hashes for godharness-0.1.4-py3-none-manylinux_2_17_x86_64.whl
Algorithm Hash digest
SHA256 b2690239ad34c55b16e71d73bdfc8d5a5eedc3955d836b46f62ba11c79586cea
MD5 775c67ba0faab54c069638256b544682
BLAKE2b-256 4843eff62cff1a7cb54008882f99bb41a67043e3949ff95dae711652ae6413db

See more details on using hashes here.

Provenance

The following attestation bundles were made for godharness-0.1.4-py3-none-manylinux_2_17_x86_64.whl:

Publisher: release.yml on tomerwave/godharness

Attestations: Values shown here reflect the state when the release was signed and may no longer be current.

File details

Details for the file godharness-0.1.4-py3-none-manylinux_2_17_aarch64.whl.

File metadata

File hashes

Hashes for godharness-0.1.4-py3-none-manylinux_2_17_aarch64.whl
Algorithm Hash digest
SHA256 56c69b141529d8d567eade93df5c88e6dc476f7e14d254a7ffdee918fcee6095
MD5 5a3b6eb53a121b99034c57be60d2e99e
BLAKE2b-256 68ae8eb8768cbcefa0d5382cb64771e276f809a455ea78d57132b59e6f822ed5

See more details on using hashes here.

Provenance

The following attestation bundles were made for godharness-0.1.4-py3-none-manylinux_2_17_aarch64.whl:

Publisher: release.yml on tomerwave/godharness

Attestations: Values shown here reflect the state when the release was signed and may no longer be current.

File details

Details for the file godharness-0.1.4-py3-none-macosx_11_0_arm64.whl.

File metadata

File hashes

Hashes for godharness-0.1.4-py3-none-macosx_11_0_arm64.whl
Algorithm Hash digest
SHA256 576e77f1f88b6ad2866c1d53d07bcd03e21ff351873ec476a9ab047a0f1b0427
MD5 1077c45542296857c3064fbbaf152ed6
BLAKE2b-256 dee8e59365f32629274ea89b5fa8dbc3dc4c6063ae622a3592d1a80e94534cba

See more details on using hashes here.

Provenance

The following attestation bundles were made for godharness-0.1.4-py3-none-macosx_11_0_arm64.whl:

Publisher: release.yml on tomerwave/godharness

Attestations: Values shown here reflect the state when the release was signed and may no longer be current.

File details

Details for the file godharness-0.1.4-py3-none-macosx_10_12_x86_64.whl.

File metadata

File hashes

Hashes for godharness-0.1.4-py3-none-macosx_10_12_x86_64.whl
Algorithm Hash digest
SHA256 014a21c00d31d5b845603a570bebd80f2c1b784d307472dd786ca47c19b7cc79
MD5 2cc9b36987feb96fbf840a9a14c28a82
BLAKE2b-256 e8e171a2a71028c03945c349447dcf70fd1ae1c19980f7edcb2544b2fb8525cc

See more details on using hashes here.

Provenance

The following attestation bundles were made for godharness-0.1.4-py3-none-macosx_10_12_x86_64.whl:

Publisher: release.yml on tomerwave/godharness

Attestations: Values shown here reflect the state when the release was signed and may no longer be current.

Release history Release notifications | RSS feed

0.1.7

7 files

0.1.6

7 files

0.1.5

7 files

This release

0.1.4 This release

7 files

0.1.3

7 files

0.1.2

7 files

0.1.1

7 files

0.1.0

7 files

Supported by

AWS Cloud computing and Security Sponsor Datadog Monitoring Depot Continuous Integration Fastly CDN Google Download Analytics Sentry Error logging StatusPage Status page