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project-context-records

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Project Context Records (PCR) gives autonomous AI work durable, reviewable memory in the repository.

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# Project Context Records (PCR)

**English** · [简体中文](./README.zh-CN.md)

Project Context Records (PCR) gives autonomous AI work durable, reviewable memory in the repository.

- **Context survives.** Intent, decisions, and lessons carry across sessions.
- **Work leaves a trail.** Each run updates plain Markdown beside the code.
- **Humans steer the loop.** Review what the agent recorded, correct it, and make that direction durable.

![Human direction starts an autonomous agent loop. Code, context, evidence, and status return through the repository for human review, and corrections guide the next loop.](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/hyfdev/project-context-records/main/assets/pcr-feedback-loop.svg)

## Try it

Install the setup skill once:

```
npx skills add hyfdev/project-context-records -g
```

Then run `/pcr-setup` from a project. It adds or updates a marked PCR block in the project's agent-instructions file, creates `.agents/docs/`, and offers to draft starter records.

To update an adopted project later:

```
npx skills update pcr-setup -g
```

Then run `/pcr-setup` again. The skill changes only the marked block and asks before writing drafts or renaming a legacy `goal.md`.

PCR has no runtime, database, schema, or required CI. The setup skill installs a convention, not a project dependency. Skill installation is powered by [skills.sh](https://www.skills.sh).

<details>
<summary>Manual setup and the complete agent-facing block</summary>

An adopted project's agents read this block from `AGENTS.md`; they do not need to fetch this repository. Paste it into the project's agent-instructions file and change `.agents/docs/` if the records live elsewhere. Keep project-specific rules outside the markers. If several tools need different instruction filenames, prefer one canonical file and symlink the others to it.

```

## Project Context Records (PCR)

This project follows **Project Context Records (PCR)** — methodology: https://github.com/hyfdev/project-context-records. PCR keeps the project's durable judgment — the *why*, the decisions, the intent — so you inherit it instead of re-deriving or re-litigating what's already settled.

When working here:
- **Where records live.** Records are in `.agents/docs/`, one topic per file, cross-linked with relative Markdown links.
  - A `README.md` there is the **map**: it routes code areas or hotspots to the exact record or heading, one-line gist per route. Create it when retrieval stops being a glance or one record grows into a long ledger.
- **Read first.** Start from the map if present, else scan the folder. Open the records or headings that cover an area before changing or answering for it; if the area has a decision ledger, read it first.
- **Use the strongest durable form.** Machine-checkable constraints go in types, tests, lints, or CI; rules that must bind every session go in the agent-instructions file, outside the markers; single-spot rationale goes beside the code with a link; records carry the cross-cutting judgment, intent, and context that must stay prose.
- **Record as you go.** Capture context when a decision lands, a trap costs you, a human corrects you, or a human asks — anything true about this project, not durable in a stronger form, and useful beyond the moment.
  - Report what you record so a human can review or vouch it.
  - Records are as public as the repo: keep secrets out, and ask before recording rationale from private context.
- **Write to be acted on.** Lead with the current conclusion and where it applies; capture the why — trade-offs, alternatives rejected, known pitfalls. Keep each topic's current truth in one fresh place, updated in place: evolution belongs to git, never to supersede chains.
- **Keep it fresh.** Update affected records in the same change that touches their subject.
  - When code and a record disagree, decide which side went stale and fix that side.
  - Back facts with durable evidence — tests, reproducible commands, committed artifacts, stable URLs, commit hashes — not ephemeral paths or one session's output.
- **Provenance.** Unstamped text is AI-accumulated: challenge and verify it freely. `[VOUCHED @handle YYYY-MM-DD]` means the named human explicitly accepted the covered words as current project direction.
  - A vouch is direction, not proof: facts keep needing durable evidence. Don't reopen vouched direction for its own sake — only on new evidence, a changed constraint, or the human's say-so.
  - When evidence argues with vouched direction, record the conflict and surface it to a human; stay inside the direction unless progress becomes impossible. Silence is not an option.
  - Scope: at a non-heading line's end, the stamp covers that line; alone on the first nonblank line below a heading, that section until the next heading of the same or higher level; alone below the document title, the whole file. Never in heading text — link anchors derive from headings.
  - Add a stamp only on explicit instruction. A stamp added by work under review counts only once the named human confirms it; an unchanged stamp on the target branch is inherited project state.
  - The stamp binds the exact covered words. Any edit that changes them — or changes which words the scope covers — removes the stamp until the human re-vouches; a change that leaves the covered words identical keeps it.
  - Legacy stamp forms (undated, before the title, inside a heading) stay valid with their original scope; never move, re-date, or reinterpret one without the human's approval.
- **Decision ledgers.** When the human declares that an area records decisions, keep that area's judgments in `<area>-decisions.md` and register new judgments there.
  - Placement: beside the area's derived document (`DESIGN-decisions.md` beside `DESIGN.md`, typically both in the records folder); with no derived document, in the records folder — a map route either way.
  - You may propose opening a ledger; only the human opens one.
  - The register contract, stated at the top of the file: only judgments the human actually expressed enter — a finished implementation, a passed review, resemblance to a reference, or silence is not acceptance. Never invent a rationale: if no reason was given, the entry says so.
  - Record the act of judgment, not the chosen thing's full content — exhaustive detail lives in the area's own document, linked. Edit entries in place; git keeps history.
  - Entries sit under **Decided** or **Open**. An Open entry marks a known-undecided question — current behavior is not a choice — with any stopgap and what would settle it. A Decided entry carries:
    - a short stable topic heading — map routes and stamp scopes anchor to it;
    - **Ruling:** one plain sentence, its force in its own wording — must / never / prefer / default to; no status field;
    - **Limits:** what it does not govern, what may change without reopening it, what would reopen it — a stopgap is a ruling plus its reopen condition;
    - **Why:** premises, alternatives compared, rejections — exactly as the human gave them;
    - **Source:** who expressed it, when, a durable pointer; for "accept the reviewed thing as a whole", pin the thing (commit hash, spec section) instead of transcribing it;
    - the vouch stamp, once the human vouches the entry, alone under the entry's heading — covering the whole entry.
- **Distill when a human reviews.** Accumulation is noisy by design; the valve is a human pass, and you draft it.
  - Propose: prune what is contradicted or dead, merge near-duplicates, promote buried context, fix map drift. Unattended, apply this to your own unstamped layer as you go — never the vouched one.
  - Flag: unstamped direction that has become load-bearing, factual claims whose evidence no longer holds, vouches plausibly affected by changes to what they cover.
  - The human decides and vouches.
- **Suggested topics.** Draft the missing ones that apply; when an existing doc already covers a topic, enroll it — a map route pointing at it where it lives, held to these same rules — instead of drafting a twin:
  - `intent.md` — what this is trying to be, for whom, and the non-goals; enroll the README instead if it truly covers them.
  - `technology-stack.md` — why tools, restrictions, and pins exist; not a manifest dump.
  - `architecture.md` — units, boundaries, and why the lines are where they are; when structure isn't glanceable.
  - `gotchas.md` — traps already paid for, each with its why; only real paid lessons.
  - `DESIGN.md` — only for a visual surface; follow https://github.com/google-labs-code/design.md (records folder by default — the spec fixes no location), enroll it in the map, and suggest wiring its linter into the project's own checks with the file's actual path (e.g. `npx @google/design.md lint .agents/docs/DESIGN.md`; platform variants in the spec).
  - `loop-goal.md` — only for an unattended run: the run's contract — goal, boundaries, finish criteria. You may draft it; the run starts only once the human has vouched the whole file (stamp below the title), and a human edit plus re-vouch re-baselines it. Never edit it yourself; if the contract itself blocks progress, stop and surface the conflict rather than stepping outside it.
  - `loop-status.md` — only for an unattended run: the run's memory — done, in flight, next, blocked — overwritten in place each iteration; its final overwrite is the handover to the returning human (what landed, what to vouch, what to prune, conflicts included). Both `loop-*` files die after the human's distillation pass over that handover; git keeps them.

```

</details>

## Example: an autonomous project loop

Suppose you are starting a new project with an agent and want it to work through several iterations on its own:

![Set up PCR, discuss the project, vouch the loop goal, give the agent an ordinary goal or loop prompt, let it iterate, and review the handover before the next run.](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/hyfdev/project-context-records/main/assets/autonomous-project-loop.svg)

1. Run `/pcr-setup`.
2. Discuss the project's intent, non-goals, architecture, and early decisions. The agent writes the useful context into records.
3. Put the next goal, boundaries, and finish criteria in `loop-goal.md`, then review and vouch it.
4. Give the agent an ordinary goal/loop prompt, for example:

> Work toward the goal in `.agents/docs/loop-goal.md`. Iterate: plan, implement, test, and update `.agents/docs/loop-status.md`. Stay within the vouched project direction. Stop when the goal is complete or a recorded constraint blocks progress.

5. While the agent iterates, it updates the code, evidence, records, and current status. When you return, review that trail, correct or vouch what should guide the next run, and remove the temporary loop files after reviewing the handover.

PCR keeps the loop's context and results. It does not start or resume the agent; that remains the job of the agent tool you use.

## Work with records

Records live in `.agents/docs/` by default, one topic per file, linked with ordinary relative Markdown links. There is no required template or front matter.

### Start small

- `intent.md` — intended users, direction, and non-goals.
- `technology-stack.md` — tool choices, restrictions, and pins that have a reason.
- `architecture.md` — important units and boundaries that are not obvious from the code.
- `gotchas.md` — traps the project has already encountered.
- `DESIGN.md` — the visual system for a project with a visual surface, following the [design.md specification](https://github.com/google-labs-code/design.md).
- `loop-goal.md` and `loop-status.md` — temporary goal and status files for an unattended run.

### Add structure only when needed

- **Map** — `.agents/docs/README.md` points code areas to the relevant records.
- **Vouch** — `[VOUCHED @handle YYYY-MM-DD]` marks exact text a human accepts as current direction.
- **Decisions** — `<area>-decisions.md` keeps repeated human judgments and open questions for one area.
- **Cleanup** — human review removes stale notes, merges duplicates, and decides what remains.

## PCR and ADR

PCR shares the core idea of [Architecture Decision Records][adr-hub]: important knowledge should live with the code and move through version control. ADR usually focuses on significant architecture decisions; PCR also carries intent, active context, and lessons for agents. Existing ADRs can stay where they are.

## Contributing

PCR should grow from repeated use, not hypothetical features. See [CONTRIBUTING.md](./CONTRIBUTING.md) to report a compliance failure, bring a recurring need, or propose a methodology change.

[adr-hub]: https://adr.github.io/

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