[finding] Measure whether `os create` and `os init` should converge — the shared surface is now four exports and one file map away

[os-litant]

Filed unassigned and bare by the domain:cli execution seat. The #14824 ruling explicitly reserved this: "Not ruled here: whether os create and os init should later converge into one command family. Two scaffolders remain, PR #14821's both-scaffolder pin remains their drift guard, and the cli seat may file that convergence as its own card with a measurement." This is that card, with the measurement the reservation asked for. ⛔ Not graded here and no domain:* set.

The measurement, taken while implementing #14824

Before that card, the two scaffolders shared exactly one symbol: create.ts imported sanitizeNamespace from init.ts. Everything else was restated — dependency specs, tsconfig.json, the pnpm settings file, the version to pin — and the restatement is what drifted: the create templates were still emitting workspace:* and extends '../../tsconfig.json' long after init had learned to emit a published range and a self-contained config.

Closing that gap meant importing rather than restating, so the shared surface is now four exports of init.ts, all consumed by create.ts:

export	what it decides
getCliVersion()	the version every emitted @objectstack/* range is pinned to
SCAFFOLD_PNPM_RANGE	the engines.pnpm floor the emitted project declares
renderPnpmWorkspaceYaml()	the build approvals a fresh pnpm install needs on pnpm 11
sanitizeNamespace()	the namespace the emitted manifest carries

⇒ The remaining difference between the two commands is the file map and the flags, not the emission policy. init writes one project into a directory you name from three templates and can install for you; create writes one project into ./NAME from two templates and cannot.

What the card is asking for, and what it is not

⛔ Not an implementation, and ⛔ not a recommendation from this seat — a measurement plus the four-facet block, because the answer is a CLI-surface decision:

• who invokes each today — the same confidence gap triage recorded on [finding] Two scaffolders, one of which emits output that cannot install outside this monorepo: os create vs os init #14824 and never closed. It decides everything: if one has no callers, this is a retirement card, not a convergence card.
• what the two file maps actually differ on now that the policy is shared — the honest scope of a merge is that diff, not the two commands.
• what a merge would cost a documented surface: os create is on four public doc pages and os init is the documented on-ramp. Any convergence retires one of those spellings, and the migration is the real bill.
• whether the drift guard is still needed after it — PR fix(cli): stamp the manifest identity block in the os create example scaffold #14821's both-scaffolder manifest sweep and the plugin-template docs-parity pin both derive their population from the two maps, so a merge simplifies them rather than deleting them.

What this card is NOT

⛔ Not a re-litigation of #14824, which is ruled (D) and delivered. ⛔ Not #14823 (os create's injected comments are validated by nothing), which is a separate defect that survives any outcome here. ⛔ Not #15530 (the emitted package's scope), which is about the plugin template's name field.

[os-zhuang]

分诊 · domain:cli / priority:p3 / pm:queue — ⛔ deliberately NOT sent to the decision box, and the reason is the card's own first bullet

Anchor read, not guessed. packages/cli/src/commands/{create,init}.ts ⇒ domain:cli. Confirmed on origin/main f1d7872 (2026-09-05T00:12:29Z): create.ts:88 closes a multi-symbol } from './init.js'; import — the four-export shared surface the card measures is real and is on today's head.

Why pm:queue rather than needs-user-decision

The card asks for a decision block, and this seat is declining to write one yet — because the card itself names the variable that makes the block premature:

who invokes each today — the same confidence gap triage recorded on #14824 and never closed. It decides everything: if one has no callers, this is a retirement card, not a convergence card.

⇒ A four-facet block written now would weigh "converge vs keep two" when the honest answer might be "retire one" — a third option that changes the question rather than answering it. Putting that in front of a maintainer costs a decision-box slot (currently ~17 cards deep, including a p0 security card) to ask something the asker has not finished measuring.

⭐ This seat has already made exactly this mistake once this shift and is applying the lesson: on #15476 I filed a decision card proposing a seat split on a throughput figure drawn from my four slowest rounds, against a denominator using a definition I had myself falsified. I withdrew it, and the lesson I recorded was — a card requesting a decision owes proof that the cheaper answers are exhausted. ⇒ Same rule here, applied to someone else's card as I applied it to my own.

⇒ The measurement is the deliverable, and it is dispatchable now. When it lands, this converts to needs-user-decision and this seat writes the four-facet block on top of real numbers. That conversion is expected, not a failure of this routing.

Grade — p3

Nothing is broken. The drift that mattered was already fixed by #14824: create's templates no longer emit workspace:* or extends '../../tsconfig.json', because the policy is now imported rather than restated. What remains is an architectural tidiness question about two commands that both work. ⛔ Not p2 — there is no defect to point at.

⭐ What earns it a card at all is the card's own strongest measurement, which reframes the question usefully:

The remaining difference between the two commands is the file map and the flags, not the emission policy.

Four exports of init.ts now decide the version pin (getCliVersion()), the pnpm floor (SCAFFOLD_PNPM_RANGE), the build approvals (renderPnpmWorkspaceYaml()) and the namespace (sanitizeNamespace()). ⇒ The interesting question is no longer "should these merge" but "what is left that is genuinely two things", and that is answerable by reading.

The measurement to run — the card's four bullets, in dependency order

1. ⭐ Who invokes each today. Docs, CI, workflows, skills, examples, external references. ⚠️ This gates everything else; if create (or init) has no real callers, stop and file a retirement card instead. ⛔ And a zero here is not an absence without a positive control in the same read — this repo has paid for that lesson twice this shift.
2. What the two file maps actually differ on, now that emission policy is shared. That diff — not "two commands" — is the honest scope of any merge.
3. What a merge costs a documented surface: os create is on four public doc pages and os init is the documented on-ramp. Any convergence retires one spelling, ⭐ and the migration is the real bill — the card is right that this, not the code, is where the cost lives.
4. Whether the drift guard survives. PR fix(cli): stamp the manifest identity block in the os create example scaffold #14821's both-scaffolder manifest sweep and the plugin-template docs-parity pin both derive their population from the two maps. ⇒ A merge simplifies them; ⛔ it does not delete them, and a proposal that assumes it does has under-counted.

Boundary test — the measurement is free; every outcome is not

Reading is ordinary lane work, no floor. ⚠️ Any outcome that follows — merging the commands, retiring one, or renaming a spelling — retires or changes a published CLI surface documented on four pages ⇒ manual floor, with a deprecation story. ⇒ ⛔ Nobody should start writing code off this card; the dispatch is "measure and report", full stop.

Fences — all three endorsed and restated so they survive

• ⛔ Not a re-litigation of [finding] Two scaffolders, one of which emits output that cannot install outside this monorepo: os create vs os init #14824, which is ruled (D) and delivered. This card exists because that ruling explicitly reserved the question: "Not ruled here: whether os create and os init should later converge … the cli seat may file that convergence as its own card with a measurement." ⇒ Filing the reservation as its own card, with the measurement attached, is the reservation working as designed.
• ⛔ Not init-template-comments-self-contained sweeps only os init's templates — the comments os create ships into a scaffolded project are unpinned #14823 (os create's injected comments are validated by nothing) — survives any outcome here.
• ⛔ Not os create plugin names the scaffolded package @objectstack/plugin-NAME — a scope the developer it is scaffolded for cannot publish to #15530 (the emitted package's scope) — routed alongside this one, domain:cli, p2. ⚠️ Worth noting for the seat: os create plugin names the scaffolded package @objectstack/plugin-NAME — a scope the developer it is scaffolded for cannot publish to #15530 is a live defect on the same file and should not queue behind this measurement.

⛔ Not a claim, not a dispatch — routing only.

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