Complete local operating contract positioning across docs and guidance

[codeforester]

Goal

Complete Base's product-positioning migration across the remaining user-facing and contributor-facing documentation surfaces.

Background

The 2026-07-14 product decision changed Base's accepted position from a broad "workspace control plane" to a local operating contract for deterministic readiness and handoff across independent Git repositories, with the loop:

inventory -> prepare -> verify -> trust -> onboard -> hand off

The primary product docs already use this framing, but the documentation map, newcomer path, agent guidance, contributor guidance, and standalone-library explanation still present the old positioning or omit the new loop. This creates contradictory guidance immediately after the product thesis changed.

The review found this drift in:

• docs/technical-overview.md
• docs/README.md
• FAQ.md
• docs/presentations/base-newcomer-orientation.md
• docs/presentations/README.md
• AGENTS.md
• .github/copilot-instructions.md
• CONTRIBUTING.md
• skills.md
• docs/base-bash-libs.md

Scope

• Rewrite stale product-introduction language around the local operating contract and deterministic readiness/handoff loop.
• Keep the workspace-control-plane phrase where it is an accurate internal implementation term, rather than performing a blind global replacement.
• Make the newcomer orientation and presentation index explain the same thesis as the README and docs/why-base.md.
• Align agent, Copilot, contributor, skills, and standalone-library guidance with the new product boundary.
• Preserve explicit boundaries: Base does not absorb project-specific behavior, become a monorepo, or own adjacent tools.
• Add a short note to the documentation map if needed so the canonical positioning source is obvious.

Acceptance Criteria

• All ten listed surfaces consistently describe Base as a local operating contract for deterministic readiness and handoff.
• The inventory -> prepare -> verify -> trust -> onboard -> hand off loop appears wherever a newcomer or contributor is introduced to Base.
• Remaining uses of "workspace control plane" are intentional implementation or historical references, not stale product introductions.
• No broken relative Markdown links are introduced.
• git diff --check passes.

Validation

• git diff --check
• Targeted search across the ten files for stale product-introduction wording and the new thesis.
• Existing documentation/link checks if available.

Non-Goals

• Do not change CLI behavior, architecture, or product requirements.
• Do not rewrite historical release-review prose merely because it quotes the former framing.
• Do not change the license text or internal control-plane terminology used for implementation ownership.
• Do not add a new product capability or claim issue-oriented handoff bundles are shipped.

Project Fields

• Status: Backlog
• Priority: P1
• Area: Docs
• Initiative: Adoption Polish
• Size: M

Agent Assignment

Agent-ready. Use docs/why-base.md, docs/architecture.md, README.md, and .ai-context/STATUS.md as the current positioning sources of truth. This is the first implementation PR in the documentation review train.

Source

Derived from the Documentation Review: Base attachment, headline finding "an unfinished product repositioning".