Compact shaping

Compact shaping

Resolve the few decisions that matter without producing four separate documents or narrowing the approved outcome.

Read the active ledger, highest-authority parent acceptance sources, approved baselines, and relevant repository evidence. Ask only when a missing answer materially changes behavior, cost, risk, or scope. Do not reopen settled choices.

For an existing workflow, keep the artifact root already resolved by using-littlepowers. When resolving a new workflow, use a non-default root only when the latest user request or a current repository instruction explicitly names it for new workflow artifacts. Existing directories, backlinks, and historical or tool-branded paths do not qualify by themselves. Otherwise use docs/littlepowers/shapes/YYYY-MM-DD-<slug>.md. Include:

• measurable outcome and non-goals;
• constraints and low-risk assumptions;
• requirements and acceptance checks;
• selected approach and decision rationale;
• affected files or components;
• ordered execution steps and validation commands.

Include the inherited complete outcome and Added / Changed / Deferred / Removed, or No scope delta. Do not create product or technical slices; ordered steps are implementation order only. Highlight and obtain explicit approval for any non-empty scope delta.

Read ../../references/outcome-lock.md. Include one Outcome Contract and one Outcome Plan Map in the shape. Give each complete observable outcome a stable OUT-### ID and map every active ID to a task and named evidence. The shape is one artifact, not a reason to add a specification, design, or separate plan.

Keep the brief proportional. If shaping exposes material unresolved architecture, security, migration, cross-system, irreversible-state, or costly-rollback choices, switch to the full route before implementation.

Checkpoint with the current workflow ID and revision:

<python> <state-cli> checkpoint \
  --workflow <workflow-id> --expect-revision <revision> \
  --phase shape \
  --artifact shape=<artifact-path> \
  --completed "compact shape" \
  --progress "Compact shape complete; execution is next" \
  --next-action "Review, bind, and validate the compact shape"

Use the returned revision, then present the shape brief for review and stop: summarize the selected approach and execution steps, name the artifact path, and name executing-plans as the next phase. After approval, run bind-contract --artifact <artifact-path> --approval-kind review-gate with --approve-scope-delta only for a distinctly approved delta, then validate-plan --artifact <artifact-path>. For explicit unattended end-to-end authorization use the matching approval kind. After both commands succeed, checkpoint --phase execute and invoke executing-plans. When the user asks for corrections, revise this artifact, checkpoint again, and present it again instead of advancing.