The first change driven by evidence rather than design.
The test
A fresh agent — no knowledge of this project, no context beyond the repository itself — was given one message: "Read blueprint/START-HERE.md and follow it. I want a thing that tracks my expenses."
It did not start writing code. It ran DISCOVER, wrote 14 numbered acceptance criteria, worked through every phase, and shipped a working expense tracker with 110 passing tests. Its state file passed validate.py --strict --release. When it hit a gate it could not satisfy — DISCOVER requires human confirmation and no human was available — it recorded the unmet criterion as a known issue instead of quietly skipping it, and it reported the one thing it could not verify (a manual browser pass) rather than claiming it.
What went wrong
It ran git init during BUILD. So its first commit contained the requirements, the design, the ADRs and the first hundred lines of code all at once. The process was followed correctly — but the history could not prove it, and neither could file timestamps.
The fix
- DISCOVER now opens by putting the project under version control, before the first artifact is written.
workflow.mdgains a "Commit at each gate" section — a rollback point at every gate, and a history that shows requirements preceded code rather than being reconstructed afterwards.- DISCOVER, DESIGN and PLAN require their artifact committed before the gate closes.
- The mistake is recorded as a DISCOVER common failure, where an agent will actually read it.
Three tests guard the change. The method is otherwise unchanged from v0.1.1 — nothing in an existing project needs to move.
Requirements: Python 3.9+ for the optional validator. Nothing else.