Ceratops governance lifecycle

Ceratops Governance Lifecycle

Goal

Route governance work to the narrowest action reference while keeping prompt, skill, instruction, and cross-scope audit decisions in one capability surface.

Context

Action References

• Optimize a raw prompt without executing it: references/optimize-prompt.md
• Propose advisory-only improvements to existing skills: references/optimize-skill.md
• Design or apply an approved regression-safe instruction change: references/propose-rules-update.md
• Audit cross-scope governance consistency: references/governance-consistency-audit.md

Inputs To Capture

• Action intent and the target prompt, skill set, instruction stack, automation, helper contract, policy surface, or governance scope.
• Expected deliverable, strict constraints, current source text, and available regression or history evidence.
• Whether the task is advisory-only or authorizes an exact mutation.

Infer missing inputs from current context and local sources before asking.

Constraints

Shared Action Rules

• Preserve the target's intended meaning, purpose, constraints, and established behavior except where the selected action explicitly permits an authorized change.
• Use only the action-scoped work and evidence needed to satisfy the selected action's completion gate; do not inspect or change unrelated surfaces.
• Do not mutate an artifact unless the selected action pre-authorizes that exact mutation or the user authorizes the exact artifact and change.
• Keep prompt optimization and skill optimization advisory-only: do not execute the underlying task or mutate artifacts.
• For skill optimization, rule updates, and governance audits, inspect companion artifacts only when they govern the same behavior, evidence, or output contract.

Skill-Specific Rules

• For instruction updates, mutate only the exact artifacts the user authorized after the proposal action accepts the candidate.

Boundaries

• Use this skill for prompt optimization, advisory skill optimization, instruction-system change design or approved application, and cross-scope governance consistency audits.
• Use $ceratops-skill-lifecycle to create a skill or apply skill-source, metadata, manifest, helper, validation, or documentation changes.
• Use the owning lifecycle audit for domain-specific repository, code, runtime, GitHub, or skill-contract consistency.

Workflow

1. Classify the action

• Use optimize-prompt when the deliverable is a rewritten prompt and the task must not be executed.
• Use optimize-skill when the deliverable is an exact advisory skill-change proposal and files must remain unchanged.
• Use propose-rules-update when the task changes or reviews durable rules, instructions, automation prompts, skill rules, helper contracts, or their interactions.
• Use governance-consistency-audit when the task checks alignment across AGENTS files, automations, directly referenced helpers, and delegated governance owners.

2. Close from action evidence

• Follow only the selected action unless its explicit boundary requires a lifecycle handoff.
• Match the final claim and output to the selected action's completion gate.

Done When

Completion Gate

• The narrowest action was selected and its completion gate passed or its exact blocker was reported.

Output Contract

Return only the selected action's required output, unresolved blockers, and important retained or unverified state.