Context

This is where Spec Kitty's shared vocabulary and governance model live: the canonical glossary contexts, the audience/persona catalog used across the docs, and the Charter governance model that shapes what your agent is told to do and why.

• Glossary contexts (*.md) — canonical terminology per bounded context, relocated from docs/context/. These remain the doctrine-extraction source consumed by scripts/generate_contextive_glossaries.py; the dashboard glossary seed files under .kittify/glossaries/ are unchanged.
• audience/ — architecture audience personas (internal/external), relocated from docs/context/audience/.
• Charter-era overview — the current Spec Kitty 3.2 Charter governance model, distilled here for quick reference. See How Charter Works and the Governance Files Reference.

Glossary reference notes

Companion notes to the glossary contexts, folded in here from the legacy root-level glossary/ stub and the previously homeless context docs:

• Glossary Conventions — source-of-truth precedence, the policy/runtime layering, term status lifecycle, and the per-term entry schema every context page follows (folded from the root glossary/ stub).
• Contextive Glossary Integration — how the context pages generate Contextive-compatible IDE hover glossaries.
• Specification-Driven Development (SDD) — the methodology behind Spec Kitty, rehomed from the repository root.
• Naming Decision: Tool vs Agent — the canonical split between tool (concrete execution product) and agent (logical collaborator identity/role).
• Historical Terms and Mappings — legacy wording mapped to its current canonical term, with version scope and migration notes.

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Spec Kitty 3.2 Charter-era overview

You are looking at the current Spec Kitty 3.2 documentation surface for new projects and upgrades.

Answer summary

• Current target version: Spec Kitty 3.2.
• Current runtime model: Charter-era missions with governed context injection.
• Current governance source: .kittify/charter/charter.yaml (the git-tracked, authoritative file; charter.md is a human-readable companion the runtime never parses).
• Current mission loop: spec-kitty next --agent <name> --mission <slug>.
• Upgrade path: Migration to Spec Kitty 3.2.

What is Charter?

Charter is the governance layer introduced in Spec Kitty 3.x. .kittify/charter/charter.yaml is the single git-tracked, authoritative charter — it's what charter synthesize reads and what the runtime resolves at every governed mission action. .kittify/charter/charter.md is a human-readable narrative companion for authors; the runtime never parses it. The flow is:

charter.yaml  ->  charter synthesize  ->  validated Charter state  ->  governed prompt/context

When you run spec-kitty next --agent <name> --mission <slug>, the runtime automatically injects the relevant Charter context into the prompt file it returns for the next mission action. For standalone work, spec-kitty dispatch "<request>" uses the same governed-context model and records an Op trail.

For the full mental model, see How Charter Works.

Documentation by type

Tutorials — learning-oriented

• Governed Charter Workflow End-to-End — Start from a fresh repo, set up governance, synthesize doctrine, and run a governed mission action
• Getting Started with Spec Kitty — First project from scratch
• Multi-Agent Workflow — Run a mission across multiple harnesses

How-to guides — task-oriented

• How to Set Up Project Governance — Charter interview, generate, and sync
• How to Synthesize and Maintain Doctrine — charter synthesize, charter resynthesize, bundle validation
• How to Run a Governed Mission — spec-kitty next --agent with Charter context injection
• How to Manage the Glossary — Living glossary, Charter integration, retrospective proposals
• How to Use the Retrospective Learning Loop — retrospect summary, agent retrospect synthesize
• Troubleshooting Charter Failures — Stale bundle, missing doctrine, compact-context, retro gate failures

Reference — authoritative specifications

• Charter CLI Reference — All charter subcommands with flags
• CLI Commands — Full spec-kitty CLI reference including Charter-era additions
• Profile Invocation Reference — standalone dispatch and invocation trail
• Retrospective Schema Reference — retrospective.yaml schema, proposal kinds, exit codes
• Governance Files Reference — Every file in .kittify/charter/

Explanation — conceptual background

• Ops vs. Missions — When to use a lightweight dispatch Op versus a full governed Mission
• Mission Types — Comparing software-dev, research, documentation, and plan missions
• How Charter Works — Mental model: doctrine → DRG → governed context
• Understanding Charter: Synthesis, DRG, and Governed Context — Deep dive into synthesis and the Directive Relationship Graph
• Understanding Governed Profile Invocation — The (profile, action, governance-context) triple
• Understanding the Retrospective Learning Loop — Why retrospectives exist and how the gate model works

Migration

Upgrading from an earlier version? See Migrating from 2.x / Early 3.x — what changed, migration steps, and known failure modes.

What is archived

Documentation for Spec Kitty 1.x and 2.x is preserved through the migration hub for historical context. The 2.x governance model did not include the DRG-backed synthesis pipeline or the retrospective learning loop. If you are running a current project, use the 3.2 documentation above.