ln-91-engineering-baseline-builder

Engineering Baseline Builder

Goal: Create or reconcile approved technical guidance and local procedures. Edit only authorized documentation, agent instructions and local skill artifacts. Audits remain read-only; never repair product code, tests, CI or infrastructure.

Execution contract: Track every checklist item as PENDING, PROVEN with observed outcome evidence, CLEARED with evidence its condition is absent, or UNPROVEN with a gap. Reading, delegation, tool failure, zero exit status, and self-reported success are not proof. Reconcile after each section; before returning, resolve all PENDING, count only PROVEN and CLEARED, and apply verdict and approval rules to every gap. Preserve intent, scope, mode, and existing authorization. Complete authorized work before required external approval; ask only consequential unresolved choices. If nobody can answer, report the exact question and apply the skill's gap verdict without waiting or guessing. Cite any blocking instruction and unresolved boundary; never invent approval gates. Scale depth to material risk; preserve mandatory checks, dependencies, and safety order while choosing verification methods. Accept equivalent user or repository evidence without requiring another skill, named artifact, or full lifecycle. Preserve source requirement and decision IDs. Bind reused evidence to relevant versions, dirty changes, configuration, environment, and observation windows; invalidate only affected claims. Choose the primary workflow by outcome and explicit selection. Consume neighboring contracts and valid evidence without duplicating ownership or restarting audits. Split distinct deliverables by scope, not mandatory skill invocation. Broad independent assessments use audit workflows; focused domain reviews remain read-only. On continuation, reconcile task, authorization, state, and gaps. Return a compact continuation record for long work or update an already authorized artifact; read-only skills do not persist it. Distinguish artifact readiness, verified behavior, and external-action authority. Trace applicable requirements to their authoritative owner, planned or implemented change, acceptance evidence and status in the existing artifact or response; no new registry is required. Explicit constraints remain binding until an authorized deviation; risk determines priority, not permission to ignore them. Investigate the causal flow beyond initially named files. Within implementation authority, include structural repair needed for the outcome; minimize total complexity and risk, not changed lines. This does not authorize unrelated cleanup or mutation during review. Before retrieval, define the evidence question; read selectively without skipping applicable instructions. Use tools for mechanical processing; summarize bounded results, errors, coverage, and source paths, keeping full output outside context. Before technical decisions, establish applicability and actual versions; verify version-dependent assumptions against official documentation or specifications. Search and read primary pages for current external recommendations; snippets are not evidence. Version-matched bundled documentation or valid prior evidence suffices. Record decision, version, source, and limitations. Mark unavailable evidence UNVERIFIED; block only essential dependent work. Prefer native mechanisms, justify added tools or abstractions with evidence, and reuse the existing rule owner.

Tool Routing

Need	Preferred capability	Fallback
Actual stack and owners	Instructions, manifests, lockfiles, focused source/configuration reads and Git state	Supplied artifacts with explicit gaps; never infer versions from examples
External semantics	Version-matched official documentation, specifications and maintained upstream source	Bundled official docs or valid prior evidence; mark unsupported conclusions UNVERIFIED
Authorized changes	Project-native editor, configuration and maintained runtime tooling	Minimal scoped patch; BLOCKED when no safe mutation capability exists
Observable verification	Existing checks and isolated runtime/consumer exercises	Static evidence labeled as such; BLOCKED when essential behavior cannot be established

Boundaries

Architecture requirements own quality targets; architecture decisions own structural tradeoffs. This workflow translates those inputs into project technical guidance, not a second architecture baseline. Executable configuration owns exact values. Local procedures own steps, not copied policy. A readiness request does not authorize implementing every gap.

Checklist

1. Establish applicability

• Inspect requested artifacts, Git state and existing instructions; preserve unrelated and interrupted work.

• Identify project type, runtimes/versions, deployment topology, trust boundaries and operational constraints from executable sources.

• Assess static analysis and type safety, architecture enforcement, dependencies/licenses, containers, configuration, authentication, authorization, errors, observability, mutation recovery and database lifecycle separately; record applicability and evidence for exclusions.

• Read existing requirements and contracts; distinguish accepted current behavior, desired changes and unverified historical claims.

• Locate each normative rule owner and executable owner of mutable values; resolve material conflicts without replacing business intent.

• Classify supplied standards as general principles, conditional technical obligations, project-specific decisions or unresolved conflicts. Preserve strictness, warning, compatibility and licensing choices; do not promote sample-project topology, devices, languages, Git or CI policy into universal defaults.

2. Build project guidance

• Map applicable principles to native stack mechanisms and version-matched evidence; record accepted exceptions and revisit triggers.

• Reuse existing documents; create an owner only when none exists. Link architecture targets and functional grants instead of copying them.

• Keep always-loaded instructions limited to constraints and conditional routing. Use supported host imports or references to one canonical body; verify actual resolution in each targeted host.

• Create a local skill only for an evidenced recurring procedure. Derive commands from the project; include inputs, target identity, side effects, verification, recovery and continuation.

• Keep local procedures independently usable without this plugin or another skill; do not duplicate the specialist catalog or invent a mandatory state directory.

• For mechanically enforceable invariants, identify an existing check or exact missing verification; implementing product/CI checks is outside this artifact-only scope.

• Engineering enforcement: Map applicable technical rules to executable checks, covered technologies/files, strictness and documented exceptions. Identify missing or ineffective checks and their implementation owner; preserve mandated presets and warning policy. Bind evidence to the actual command and supported environment, not configuration presence. Read-only workflows report gaps without repairing them; guidance-only workflows describe controls without executing or implementing them.

3. Verify ownership and usability

• Check links, commands, configuration references and instruction precedence against actual owners; exclude secrets and volatile inventories.

• Trace representative future tasks through routing and procedures. Verify prerequisites and stop conditions without unauthorized operations.

• Ensure repeated application updates the same owners without duplicates; report implementation gaps separately from artifact readiness.

• Reconcile final changes with protected behavior, canonical owners and observed checks; update only authorized guidance and report remaining gaps.

Verdict

• READY: requested guidance is usable, canonical and verified against its sources; this does not assert implementation readiness.
• INCOMPLETE: useful guidance exists but consequential contract gaps remain.
• PASS / CONCERNS / FAIL: a read-only guidance assessment finds respectively no material issue, bounded gaps, or an evidenced required correction.
• BLOCKED: scope, authority, ownership or essential evidence prevents a usable artifact.

Self-Check

• Reconcile before returning. Check item-level evidence, requirement coverage, contradictions, scope, verdict, and applicable cleanup. Correct the report or authorized artifacts. Reuse valid evidence; do not automatically rescan the repository or rerun successful commands. Repeat checks only for relevant changes, failures, or unresolved evidence. Disclose remaining gaps.

Output Contract

Report in the user's language, in this order; label all five fields and state each fact once. Use controlled plain language: one fact per sentence, usually under 20 words, active voice, and one term per concept, with no synonyms for verdicts, IDs, or states. Small results may use one line per field; omit empty tables and do not copy linked artifacts:

1. Result: The exact skill-specific verdict token first, then the supported outcome.
2. Scope: Reviewed/changed scope, exclusions, baseline, and material assumptions.
3. Evidence: Skill-specific fields below; distinguish facts, inferences, and unverified claims. Link artifacts; use tables when useful.
4. Verification: Checks/results, unavailable evidence, and applicable cleanup/external state.
5. Completion: Checklist: X/Y complete; Incomplete: None or each UNPROVEN item's reason, outcome impact, and exact next action; residual risks and required decisions.

Skill-specific evidence: Applicable principles, stack evidence, canonical document/executable owners, changed artifacts, routing/local procedure decisions, source/version mapping, exclusions and unresolved implementation work.