Changelog

Release semantics live in docs/versioning.md. From 0.4.0 onward, any release that breaks synced repos — removed or renamed rules, doctor SUMMARY-key changes, profile schema breaks, core-manifest removals — leads its entry with a Breaking for synced repos section: what changes in your repo on the next sync, and what to do about it.

0.3.0 — 2026-08-07

Brand cohesion: the tooling layer stops speaking the retired "playbook" brand. One dispatcher, renamed machine state, re-rendered field — no artifact generation mixes the two brands. Decisions in docs/decisions/0002; full narrative: docs/releases/v0.3.0.md.

Added

• scripts/house-rules dispatcher — the sole documented entry point (init | doctor | sync), forwarding to the implementation scripts unchanged; hr and house-rules shell aliases replace pbi/pbd. A missing or unknown subcommand is a usage error (exit 64).
• Content-aware rc-block refresh: install-aliases.sh now detects a present-but-stale source block (the body changed at this cut — the sourced filename moved) and rewrites it in place, with the malformed-marker guards intact.
• Fixture coverage: the profile-distribution suite is a blocking CI gate (process-kit-b3m); both suites run on bd-less runners via a no-op shim (process-kit-4ma); new cases pin rendered-section content (playbook-free, dispatcher-form), CRLF rc blocks, stale-stamp refresh, and the nested-BEGIN guard below — 55 assertions total.

Changed

• Script renames: playbook-init.sh → init.sh, playbook-doctor.sh → doctor.sh (independently runnable behind the dispatcher); internal PLAYBOOK_ROOT → KIT_ROOT; init lock → .house-rules-init.lock. Doctor exit codes, SUMMARY: keys, and the marker grammar are unchanged.
• Machine-state renames, clean break: ~/.playbook-sync-targets → ~/.house-rules-sync-targets, ~/.playbook-aliases.sh → ~/.house-rules-aliases.sh, the documented ignore file → ~/.house-rules-ignore. No legacy-name recognition ships in code (decision 0002 A2).
• Renderers and docs: the AGENTS.md section and the global-safety-net blocks emit dispatcher-form commands only; active docs and rules swept of the tooling-brand "playbook" (dated records and the generic graybeard-playbook name exempt per 0002 A4). PROCESS_KIT, the ~/process-kit clone path, and the process-kit-* bead prefix deliberately keep their names as documented history (A3).
• Legacy ai-dev-playbook: marker recognition sunset (process-kit-26b) after a field sweep showed zero old-marker artifacts; the 0.2.0 in-place migration machinery is removed.

Fixed

• Data-loss guard (Tier 1 review Critical): an orphan BEGIN above a well-formed marker block made all three installers' rewrite scanners silently delete the user content between them — newly reachable from install mode via the refresh path. A BEGIN seen while a block is open now refuses the rewrite; fixed test-first at every scanner (commit 3eeacc8, ledger red/green).
• Honest refusal exits: malformed-marker refusals in the installers exited 0 behind success banners ("Installed aliases", "Nothing to remove"); they now exit 1 with explicit warnings across install and uninstall in both installers and in init's section refresh.
• Doctor fix strings taught the retired direct-script invocation at 8 sites — swept to dispatcher form; sync-rules.sh shed dead migration machinery (derive_repo_root, the removed ~/.cursor-sync-targets fallback's scaffolding, the v1.0-era claude/rules migration) and --show-version now says house-rules.

0.2.0 — 2026-08-06

First public release, under the final name house-rules (renamed from the working name process-kit; old GitHub URLs redirect). Full narrative: docs/releases/v0.2.0.md.

Added

• Profile-driven conventions (flagship): profiles/conventions.toml is the machine-readable source for the Tier 1 convention sets — commit types and branch grammar, close-evidence shape, defer-comment grammar, the banned-token catalog, and TDD obligations by bead type. scripts/conventions projects it into rule prose (render-rule) and answers verdicts (check-commit/check-branch/check-close); the affected rule sections are generated fragments byte-checked against the profile render by a CI regen gate with a seeded-drift self-test.
• Checker CLI suite: tdd-ledger (durable red-then-green evidence), defer-lint, close-reason-lint, banned-token-scan — stdlib-only single-file CLIs distributed to targets via one manifest (scripts/distributed-clis.list) and drift-checked by the doctor. The conventions profile ships alongside them and drift-checks byte-for-byte (SUMMARY key profile_drift). In targets everything runs advisory; blocking enforcement stays in the kit's CI.
• Refinement framework: the refinement skill, concepts doc, and proposal template — the rule-topology split below was its pilot.
• Apache-2.0 LICENSE; CONTRIBUTING refreshed to match; the Agentic Covenant ships as CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md.
• Kit CI self-enforcement: projection-drift gate (generated claude/rules/ vs cursor/rules/ canon), shellcheck at warning severity, fragment-regen gate, the three checker test suites, and the marker-migration fixture suite — each drift gate with a seeded self-test.

Changed

• Rule topology: heavyweight rules split into thin always-on law plus on-demand skills (operating-model + graph-planning, bead-completion/beads-quality + bead-authoring, pragmatic-tdd rule + skill, multi-agent-review + tier1-review/tier2-handoff, defer-convention + the defer-lint checker).
• Marker migration: installer marker blocks renamed from the legacy ai-dev-playbook: prefix to house-rules:, with in-place migration of already-installed blocks and malformed-marker guards (orphaned or CRLF markers warn instead of truncating).
• graybeard-* rename: the lazy-senior-dev skill family (formerly ponytail-*) renamed with credit to DietrichGebert/ponytail (MIT), which it was adapted from.
• Neutrality: per-user voice parameters moved out of the public core into overlay files (.agents/overlay.md, machine-global ~/.agents/overlay.md); README rewritten as the public front door with deep operational content moved to docs/operations.md.
• Maintenance subagents in .cursor/agents/ rewritten for the kit (no predecessor/org-specific references); org-neutral Agentic Covenant blog draft added at docs/blog-agentic-covenant.md.

Fixed

• packet skill: render.py --verify's divergence-strip check scanned a fixed 1800 characters past the grid heading, false-WARNing template-conformant packets whose grid rows carry rich linked evidence. The window is now structural and accepts the strip above or below the grid; behavioral tests added at skills/packet/tests/test_render_verify.py.

0.1.0 — 2026-07-15

Initial extraction. This repo starts with fresh git history; the content was carried from a private predecessor playbook at its v1.2.0, with all organization-specific material removed.

Carried over

• 12 canonical Cursor rules (cursor/rules/*.mdc) and the generated Claude Code format (claude/rules/*.md, regenerated to full parity — defer-convention and ponytail-playbook were missing from the predecessor's generated set)
• Scripts: playbook-init.sh, playbook-doctor.sh, sync-rules.sh, install-global-safety-net.sh, install-aliases.sh, setup-worktree.sh
• Global safety net block sources (global-safety-net/*.md)
• Skills: brainstorming, systematic-debugging, ponytail family (audit/debt/gain/help/review)
• Onboarding: WELCOME.md, QUICKSTART.md, sandbox exercise, core docs (concepts, FAQ, glossary, governance, adoption guide, rule-effectiveness scorecard)
• Claude Code hooks (.claude/hooks/) and settings template
• Templates: PR template with Assisted-by disclosure

New

• Migrated council and workspace-kickoff skills from user-level (~/.cursor/skills/) into the versioned skills/ library
• Standalone identity: README, PLAN, AGENTS, CLAUDE rewritten for the kit under the working name process-kit
• PROCESS_KIT env var replaces AI_DEV_PLAYBOOK in fresh installs (installer marker strings keep the legacy prefix for in-place update compatibility; see defer: comments)

Removed (relative to the predecessor)

• Organization-specific decks, examples, integration docs, and internal audit subagents
• The deprecated sync-cursor-rules.sh shim