Requirements, architecture, delivery, debugging and review — from one natural-language prompt.
A repository template that gives coding agents an enforced engineering workflow instead of per-project prompt files. Instructions, a skill, guard hooks, a read-only reviewer, and a persistent code index — all activated by describing the task in plain language, with no slash commands in the ordinary path.
Minimal Engineering Harness
InternalInternal. Tested and documented, used on the lab’s own repositories — including this website — but the repository is private, so there is nothing to link yet.
Node.js · Make · Git submodules · Claude Code · Codex CLI
Coding agents work because of their harness, not despite it. The instructions, the guard rails, the review step, the index of what already exists — that machinery is what separates an agent that ships from one that produces plausible diffs. Most teams rebuild it per repository, in prompt files nobody maintains.
This is that machinery as a template, installed as a submodule and materialized into the surrounding repository. It is deliberately small, it supports exactly two clients, and it activates on its own: you describe the task, and the workflow is already in force.
The rules it enforces
Match proof to claim
Unit, fake, static, or upstream-smoke evidence is not integration, end-to-end, or live proof. Name the tier and any limitation.
A gate that has never been red is not yet evidence
Prove each gate loads and exercises its target: break what it guards, watch it fail, restore. A green check that could never go red proves nothing.
Ship-state is not code-state
“Done” means a user can do the thing. A green build on a feature nobody can reach is a green build.
Resolve root causes
Never suppress, work around, or defer an error to keep moving.
Derive before you ask
The repository, git history, package registries, vendor docs and installed CLIs answer most factual questions. Ask only what changes what gets built.
What it installs
Always-on instructions
Ground rules both supported clients read on every session, with no command to remember.
Deterministic guard hooks
Pre-tool hooks that block destructive git operations and bare-metal Python, before the model gets a chance to reason its way past them.
- git-guard
- py-guard
A read-only reviewer
A subagent invoked automatically before non-trivial handoffs, which ends in either APPROVE or REQUEST_CHANGES.
A persistent code index
One local index shared across clients and sessions, so a new session queries structure instead of re-exploring the repository.
An idempotent installer
Marker-block merging, backups, and drift detection. Hard conflicts abort with a printed plan rather than half-applying.
Everything activates on its own. Describe the task in plain language.
This repository is private, so there is nothing to link. The status above is the whole of what can be verified from outside the lab today.
- DWG
- A2O-000
- Sheet
- 05 of 09
- Rev
- draft
- Scale
- 1:1