specthis

A notary for a research pipeline. It records who claimed what about your project, and tells you which of those claims the content still supports.

Your project is a bakery

The final goods are cakes and pastries: your tables, your figures, the paper that interprets them. The raw materials are flour and eggs — data you did not produce, cannot certify, and can only source.

Between them is everything you actually build: a batter, a choux paste, a crème pâtissière. Intermediates, each with a name, each held to a standard, each feeding several things downstream.

You write three things, and keeping them separate is the whole idea:

And two things get signed, by different people, at different moments:

• The formula is approved once. Someone makes it, cuts it open, judges it. That approval covers the next four hundred batches — and is void the instant the method changes or you rewrite the standard.
• Every batch gets a label. Crème pât — 12 Aug — milk lot 88. One per making. It survives nothing.

specthis keeps both pieces of paper, in git, and answers at any moment: which claims still hold, and what does each broken one need — a mind (re-judge), a machine (re-run), or patience (upstream will heal it). The two never block each other: a batch can be remade while someone is still deciding whether the formula was right.

specthis makes nothing. It never forks a process. Execution belongs to a compute manager — the bundled runner, or one your project supplies. specthis hands over the production sheet, reads what came back, and countersigns it.

docs/analogy.md tells this properly, in ten minutes, including the failures and what each one needs.

Start here

pip install specthis (or see Install for uv), then read one of the two worked examples — small enough to read in one sitting, and executed by the test suite so they cannot drift from the tool:

• examples/wages — four workers, two years. The whole loop: record, build, vouch. Then it breaks the project twice to show the point — a prose edit moves one queue, a code edit moves both.
• examples/wage-grid — the same project after the second country arrives. One formula, many batches: templates, and what a single vouch over a family actually claims.

Then docs/specification.md for what is precisely true.

Status: implemented and tested. See Roadmap for what is deliberately not built.

The model

The claim unit is the entry: one script(-set), one output, one deliverable. A spec file is a bundle of entries plus the prose contract they are judged against. The exception is kind: library — entries whose chain stops at code (package modules with no artifact): they carry only the attested claim, are ready once vouched at the current digests, and contribute their code manifest as the upstream digest to whatever consumes them — so editing a library spec or module flags exactly that entry for re-judgment and exactly its consumers for re-run, instead of detonating every vouch through the package blob.

Two species of claim, verified in opposite directions:

• Attested (spec ↔ code, in specs/vouches.toml): someone who did not author the change judged that the code satisfies the contract, at exact digests. Verified backward — are the blobs unchanged since the vouch?
• Derived (code → artifact, in specs/runs.toml): this artifact came from this code on these exact inputs, captured as a composed signature over scripts + package blob + upstream artifact digests
  • workflow config. Verified forward — recompute, compare.

Judgment cannot be computed; computation need not be judged.

Claims are shallow; trust propagates. A vouch covers only the entry's own blobs. When something upstream moves, downstream vouches don't expire — they get flagged.

Status is two coordinates, not one word. The two claim species become two status axes — one per ledger, one per tree — and each entry sits on both; specthis derives them independently, neither gating the other:

• Certification (the attested claim, the vouch tree — is the definition judged?): unimplemented → unvouched → certified, or rejected. A mind's claim about the (spec, code) pair; expires only when a digest moves.
• Realization (the derived claim, the run tree — is the recorded call the one today's content implies?): never-run → stale → current (absent for library entries, whose chain stops at code). A machine's claim about bytes.

So specthis check reports two queues — definitions needing a mind, realizations needing a machine — with everything merely downstream summarized per tree. An entry can sit in both (a mind audits it while a machine reruns it), and the two queues drain in parallel. The flattened single-word diagnosis — what status, the dashboard, and older surfaces show — is derived from the pair, with certification breaks winning:

Two kinds of edge, only one carries trust. consumes: edges are artifact flows — they enter signatures and propagate status. references: edges are vocabulary — visible to readers and agents, invisible to the ledger. A definitions hub can be edited without detonating the certificate graph.

The pen is guarded. Attested claims are written only by specthis vouch, which requires a named attester (--as, no git-config default — friction is the feature) and must never be run by the author of the change, human or agent. A rejection binds at its exact digest pair: vouch refuses an ok over a standing rejection until something changes.

The notary never forks a process. You author a pipeline in your compute manager's own format; specthis reads it, hands over the whole thing, and adopts the manifests that come back. A bundled runner ships for projects with no manager of their own; anything implementing four operations can replace it. git holds claims, the manager holds bytes, digests join them. No mtime appears anywhere in ledger logic: a fresh clone on another machine gives identical answers.

Division of labor

Three roles, three pens — and only one of them is free-form:

The author's pen is unguarded because nothing it writes becomes trusted on its own: a binding edit changes which files the code manifest covers, which expires the standing vouch — it can revoke trust, never mint it. And when the critic vouches, the binding and the pipeline step are swept into the judgment: they attest exactly the files the binding names and exactly the command, inputs and outputs the step declares. Realizing a spec means writing code and wiring it — perfect code pointed at last year's data still fails the contract. Author proposes, critic attests, a manager executes — and check believes none of them without re-deriving the digests.

The verbs

specthis check                 # the two queues (minds, machines); non-zero on any local break
specthis status [entry]        # both axes, and WHICH input moved
specthis lint                  # every problem at once: spec, map, and pipeline correspondence
specthis vouch <entry> --as NAME [--reject] [--note TEXT]
specthis build [entries…]      # hand the pipeline to the manager, adopt what comes back
specthis build <entry> --force # rebuild an artefact edited on disk
specthis record <entry>        # pin bytes no pipeline produced (a download, a one-off)
specthis adopt <entry> FILE    # countersign a manifest from a manager specthis did not launch
specthis adopted               # publish the steps your manager can skip (.specthis/adopted.json)
specthis certify               # code-identity certificates, if you use [package] globs

adopted is the answer back across the seam. When results are made elsewhere — a cluster, a collaborator — adopt records that their bytes are current, but your compute manager keeps its own bookkeeping and would re-execute the step anyway, submitting jobs for work already on disk and verified. So specthis publishes the ledger in the manager's vocabulary: per step, the command and the dependency and output digests. build republishes it before every handoff; run the verb yourself if you drive make or snakemake directly. It is evidence, not an order — the manager still decides, and a moved digest still means run the step.

Boundaries are load-bearing: check/status/lint never write, vouch never touches runs.toml, and nothing but vouch touches vouches.toml.

Three more render views — regenerated, never read back by the ledger:

specthis export    # write specs/specs.html + _index.json
specthis serve     # live dashboard at localhost:8765; re-renders on any
                   # spec / ledger / code / output change (writes nothing)
specthis dag       # the spec-level DAG on stdout (or --out FILE): a standalone
                   # SVG figure (--view rails for the dashboard's git-log-style
                   # list), or --format json — nodes + both layouts + edges

Readers are lenient, writers are strict: check, lint, and the dashboard load whatever parses and surface the grammar problems (in the page, in a red "does not parse" sidebar group with the broken file's markdown still rendered best-effort, and in check's output — which exits non-zero on problems). vouch, record and migrate refuse to write ledgers against a tree that doesn't parse. The /specthis-lint slash command explains each problem and fixes the mechanical ones.

When served, outputs are clickable: an output chip whose bytes are on disk opens at /view/<path> in a new tab — text escaped and syntax-highlighted (highlight.js from CDN, plain text offline), images and PDFs rendered natively — always restricted to declared outputs. In the static specs.html opened from disk there is no server, so the chips degrade back to plain text.

Outputs a browser can't show — a .tex table fragment, say — can be previewed through a project-declared recipe in specs/bindings.toml, the same division of labor as executors: specthis provides the plumbing, the project provides the how.

[preview.".tex"]
command = "scripts/preview_tex.sh {input} {out}"
inputs  = ["paper/preamble.tex", "scripts/preview_tex.sh"]

The command runs at the project root and must place its artifact (format, default pdf) at {out}; specthis substitutes {input} (the output file) — so a ten-line wrapper can compile a fragment inside the very preamble that will host it (the bundled specs/README.md ships one). Previews are a view, never a claim: artifacts are content-addressed by (output bytes, recipe, declared inputs), cached outside the repo, rendered on first view at /preview/<path> (linked from the /view/ page), and never read back by the ledger. Editing the preamble invalidates exactly the previews that read it. A failing recipe shows its compile log in the browser — failures are not cached, so fixing and reloading retries.

Running the pipeline

You author the pipeline in your manager's own format — specthis reads it and never writes it. Steps contribute four things: an id (the entry name), a command, declared inputs, declared outputs.

The bundled runner reads pipeline.toml:

[steps.clean-wages]
command = "python src/clean_wages.py"
deps    = ["src/clean_wages.py", "config/clean.toml", "data/raw/wages.parquet"]
outs    = ["data/wages.parquet"]

Edges are derived, not declared twice: a step follows every step whose outs its deps name. It walks the DAG and nothing else — no parallelism, no resources, no remote, no retries. Wanting any of those is the signal to point a real manager at the same declarations:

[backend]
class = "mypkg.adapters:ScripthutBackend"

Anything implementing parse / submit / poll / manifests qualifies. specthis never selects steps — it hands over the whole pipeline, because only the manager can know whether a rerun reproduces identical bytes, or whether the work is already in its cache.

Every manifest is verified against the bytes on disk before it is recorded. That proves transcription, not derivation: it catches a garbled manifest, and it does not make a manager trustworthy — establishing that outputs really came from that code would mean re-running, which is the capability specthis does not have.

Use cases

Change a spec, implement, vouch, run. The authoring loop. You tighten the contract in specs/compute-alpha.md; every entry in that file immediately reads audit needed — the old vouch bound different bytes. You (or the spec-implementer agent) update the script to match. Then the two claims are recorded, in order and by different hands:

vim specs/compute-alpha.md          # contract edit -> entries flagged: audit needed
vim scripts/fit_alpha.py            # bring the code back in line
specthis vouch fit-alpha --as ana   # a NON-author judges code vs contract
specthis build fit-alpha            # the manager runs it; specthis countersigns
specthis check                      # ready — and downstream entries now
                                    # show stale, ready for `specthis build`

Did anything change? The daily question — after a git pull, after an editing session, or when you come back to the project after a month. One read-only command answers it and names the repair:

$ specthis check
vouch tree — definitions needing a mind:
  unvouched      fit-beta        moved since vouch: code: fit_beta.py moved
run tree — realizations needing a machine:
  stale          fig-gamma       moved: upstream:fit-gamma
waiting on upstream: 3 (2 on minds, 1 on machines)
ready: 11/16

Re-judge fit-beta, machine-rebuild fig-gamma, and the three downstream entries heal on their own. To see exactly what moved on one entry — which script, which workflow file, which upstream artifact — ask specthis status fit-beta.

Rebuild everything a machine can fix. After an upstream fit re-ran, or after a migration, every downstream entry with a standing vouch is just compute:

specthis build           # hand over the whole pipeline; the manager rebuilds
                         # what its content keys say is out of date

Reject bad work. A critic reads an implementation and disagrees with it. The rejection is a claim too — recorded, attributed, and binding at exactly those digests:

specthis vouch fit-beta --as ben --reject --note "loss ignores weights"

The entry reads rejected until the spec or the code actually changes; vouch refuses an ok over the standing rejection at the same pair, so nobody can quietly re-stamp the same bytes.

Onboard a machine (or a collaborator). Clone the repo anywhere and run specthis check: same claims, same digests, same answer — no mtimes to confuse a fresh checkout. Vouches travel with git; artifacts don't have to. Whatever reads stale is one specthis build away — and whatever your manager already has cached costs nothing to restore.

Let agents work, keep the pen. The spec-auditor runs the checks and judges contract-in-spirit but only ever proposes verdicts; the spec-implementer authors code, smoke-tests it, and stops at the vouch. Sessions end, the ledger remembers: what was judged, by whom, at which digests — and what still needs a mind, a machine, or patience.

Route the audit queue: humans judge intent, agents read drift. A vouch binds an exact (spec_sha, code_sha) pair, so audit needed on a previously-vouched entry splits into two lanes. If the spec moved, the contract itself changed — re-judging the code against new intent is human work. If only the code moved, the contract is stable and the question is drift against a fixed target — exactly what the spec-auditor is built to read; its proposal gets stamped cheaply with vouch --as, attention reserved for the contract lane. Never-vouched entries (a fresh migration, say) have no pair to diff, so the first pass through the queue is all human-grade judgment — and it's that baseline that makes later drift legible and delegable.

State: three human-readable files, all in git

• specs/vouches.toml — attested claims: (spec_sha, code_sha, verdict, attester, when, note) per entry, plus the digests decomposed (spec_block_sha, per-file code_manifest) so an expired vouch is attributed — check and status say which script, the package blob, or where in the spec file moved — not merely detected. vouch --took SECONDS records what the judgment cost (claim metadata, moves no digest); the DAG views show each spec's last run/vouch age and duration.
• specs/runs.toml — derived claims: the composed signature, the output digest, the executor, the wall-clock duration_seconds (claim metadata — enters no signature), and the full [inputs] table (each script, workflow file, the package blob, and one upstream:<entry> digest per consumed artifact — so an upstream re-run is never invisible).
• specs/bindings.toml — the map: not a claim, and deliberately small. Two facts no pipeline format can express — scripts (which of a step's dependencies is judged code, the boundary between the two trees) and produces (which file is a logical product) — plus [package] globs for the shared library every code manifest covers. Everything about how a step runs lives in the pipeline. Unbound entries follow the scripts/<entry>.py convention.

A spec file is markdown. Each ### entry block declares its own interface as a field list:

### clean-wages

Drop negative wages, winsorize at the 99th percentile via `winsor`.
One row per worker-year; no duplicates.

- consumes: raw-wages
- produces: wages-panel

Type is inferred from the fields — a bare - code is a library, a physical path is a source, logical produces is computable, and - props: dataset makes it a template whose instances the pipeline declares. kind: and name: are optional; the older frontmatter form still parses, so a project migrates at its own pace.

A vouch pins the entry's own block, not the whole file: editing a sibling entry is somebody else's business. Display-only keys (title, group, priority) are stripped before hashing, so retitling never disturbs a vouch. No Script:, no Status:: the map holds bindings, status is derived. See src/specthis/templates/specs/README.md for the full convention (the bundled templates ship a research/paper instantiation — compute entries producing JSON, report entries exporting .tex into a host document — but the ledger model is domain-general).

Install

pip install specthis          # core: CLI + agent templates

Or with uv — no install needed, works from any directory:

uvx specthis serve            # run straight from PyPI
uv tool install specthis      # or install a persistent `specthis` command

From a clone of this repo, uv run specthis <command> (at the repo root) builds the local source and runs it.

The dashboard serves on 127.0.0.1:8765 by default; pass --port/--host to specthis serve if that port is taken.

Journal

Alongside the claims lives the narrative: journal/ at the project root holds dated entries, one markdown file per story —

journal/2026-06-30-smc-ffbs-resampling-fix.md
journal/2026-06-10-abb-calibration-and-lom-fits.md

A journal entry is prose, not a claim: the ledger neither reads nor hashes it, no status depends on it, and there is nothing to vouch. It records what the ledger cannot — why a result looks the way it does, which alternatives died and how, the numbers behind a decision. Small shareable artefacts (a JSON bundle, a figure) can be committed next to their entry so they stay downloadable even when the results directory is gitignored.

The dashboard picks the directory up automatically: a journal group in the sidebar, a filterable card index (date + title), and one page per entry with the narrative rendered. Markdown links cross the two worlds in both directions — a spec linking journal/2026-06-30-….md and an entry linking ../specs/compute-alpha.md both become hash-routed links in the page. The date comes from the filename prefix, the title from the first # heading (or frontmatter title:).

The /specthis-journal [topic] slash command (installed by specthis install) writes an entry from the current Claude Code session: what was attempted, what was decided and why, the dead ends worth remembering, with links to the specs involved.

Scaffold a project

specthis install    # writes the Claude Code subagents into .claude/agents/
specthis init       # creates specs/ with README.md + AGENTS.md templates

Four Claude Code subagents and the slash commands cover the daily operations:

• spec-auditor — runs specthis check/status for the mechanical layer, judges contract-in-spirit for entries on the frontier, and proposes verdicts. It never vouches.
• spec-implementer — authors code for an unimplemented entry, binds it, smoke-tests it, then stops and proposes the vouch. It authored the change, so the pen is not its.
• experiment-runner — launches a long run in the background (preferring specthis build <entry> so the claim is recorded), watches the log, reports completion.
• spec-critic + /specthis-vouch [entries…] — the one sanctioned agent pen. The slash command is your explicit commission (your name comes from git config user.name): it spawns the critic as a fresh session that authored nothing, which re-reads spec and code from disk, vouches clear passes as spec-critic (for <name>) (so the ledger shows the judgment was agent-made and who asked for it), rejects clear violations, and leaves every doubt unvouched for you. Independence here is contextual, not personal — the ledger records exactly that.
• /specthis-run [entries…] — the machine half: hands the pipeline to the manager (specthis build), backgrounds and monitors long runs instead of blocking, and reports what was rebuilt, restored from cache, and left for a mind. Together the two commands split the frontier by repair kind: /specthis-vouch for minds, /specthis-run for machines.
• /specthis-journal [topic] — the narrative pen: writes a dated entry into journal/ from the current session (see Journal). No ledger is touched — the journal records the why, the ledgers record the what.

Migrating from the old _lock.json

specthis migrate            # dry-run report
specthis migrate --write    # import run rows

Old certified inputs import as derived claims only — no vouches migrate, by design: judgment does not transfer from a hash file. Post-migration everything reads audit needed or stale, and the humans work the queue with specthis vouch / specthis build.

Roadmap

Done. Spec and map parsing; content hashing, per-file tables and the step digest; both ledgers; the two-tree status model (certification × realization, derived independently — check prints two queues, every surface shows both axes); template entries with per-instance claims; source entries and record; the pipeline reader, the bundled runner, project-supplied backends, build and adopt; correspondence lint; code-identity certificates; migration; scaffolding and agent templates; the two-tree dashboard (export + serve with live reload — a vouch-tree landing and a run-tree page plus an activity log, a spec-level DAG with status rails, a layered figure and layout JSON via specthis dag, stdlib only); the journal; and output previews.

Also done: skip: true in frontmatter — comment a spec out while developing. Skipped entries leave every count and every queue; writers refuse them; their ledger rows stay dormant; the body is not grammar-checked; consuming a skipped entry is a lint problem; the dashboard renders the spec greyed. Honesty is content-addressed: a spec edited while skipped comes back as unvouched, while a pure skip/un-skip round-trip restores the exact vouched bytes and trust returns with them.

Deliberately not built.

• Parallel rebuilds, a byte cache, remote execution. These left with the built-in executor in v0.1.0. A compute manager that has them supplies them; specthis does not reimplement half a scheduler.
• One merged ledger. vouches.toml and runs.toml stay two files. Collapsing them into a single record type changes no behaviour, and the payoff — a third capability landing free — has no third capability to land.

Known future extensions — each additive, none precluded by the core:

• Adoption path: specthis init --from-code. Kick-start an existing repo: walk scripts/, read what is already there (docstrings, filenames, imports), and draft spec files plus proposed bindings — a one-time extraction the human then edits. Drafts arrive unvouched, so the first pass is human-grade judgment. Specs remain the single home: docstrings seed the draft but are never read back by the ledger.
• Output-schema-into-signature.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.