Doc Harness — Document-Based Project Control

Doc Harness is a documentation system that enables any AI agent or human collaborator to understand and resume project work purely from reading files — no external memory needed.

It creates and maintains five documents per project:

• CLAUDE.md — Project entry point (overview, recovery chain, iron rules, operational rules)
• CURRENT_STATUS.md — Active state (tire tracks / car body / headlights / driving manual)
• FILE_INDEX.md — File catalog organized by category
• WORKLOG.md — Permanent work history (append-only)
• DOC_HARNESS_SPEC.md — Complete specification (reference document)

Two optional documents may be added when a project accumulates such content (see spec.md Chapter 13):

• PARKING_LOT.md — Deferred items with preconditions for revival
• PHILOSOPHY.md — Principles forged by this project's practice

One optional mechanism may be adopted when a project coordinates with others (see spec.md Chapter 14):

• Inter-project inbox/outbox — self-contained file-based messaging protocol. inbox/ and outbox/ directories; YAML-frontmatter Markdown messages; lifecycle unread → read → actioned. Fully described inside doc-harness itself; no external spec needed.

Commands

/doc-harness init [project-name] [description]

Initialize Doc Harness for a new project. Creates all 5 files in the current directory.

→ See [init.md](init.md) for full instructions and templates.

/doc-harness check

Audit the current project's documentation health and reflect on working principles.

→ See [check.md](check.md) for full check procedures.

/doc-harness sync [--auto]

Synchronize status documents with reality. Repair drift, refresh stale fields, register missing files, and optionally trigger phase transition or WORKLOG archival.

• `interactive` (default): Ask before phase transitions, archival, or creating new principle documents.
• `auto`: Execute fixes without asking.

→ See [sync.md](sync.md) for full sync procedures.

/doc-harness flush [--auto]

Emergency save before context compression. Includes everything sync does, plus mandatory extraction of important context information into documents.

flush runs in five phases: (A) sync, (B) context inventory, (C) write and register, (D) verification, (E) flush marker. Phases B and C are the distinguishing feature — they scan the agent's current context for information that exists only in memory, classify it, and write it to files. Without Phase B and C, flush is indistinguishable from sync and has failed.

• `interactive` (default): Ask before each significant extraction.
• `auto`: Use heuristics to classify and save context information without asking.

→ See [flush.md](flush.md) for full flush procedures. Includes empty-scan reporting requirements when no extractable items are found.

/doc-harness resume [--auto]

Structured state recovery: when context is empty or the user wants to resume work, systematically read status documents, verify understanding, and produce a recovery report before continuing.

resume runs in four phases: (A) execute Recovery Chain (identity anchor → must-read → task-conditional), (B) produce Recovery Report (7-section structured synthesis), (C) Understanding Verification (5 forced questions proving comprehension), (D) resume decision.

• `interactive` (default): Present Recovery Report to user for confirmation before proceeding.
• `auto`: Perform full procedure without user interaction, apply auto-resume decision tree (≤7 days fresh + no edge conditions = proceed; otherwise = wait for user).

→ See [resume.md](resume.md) for full resume procedures.

/doc-harness recall [query]

Retrieve information from the project's Doc Harness document hierarchy. Search systematically across registered documents and return structured, source-cited results.

Query types:

• Status/Plan: "What's the current plan for auth?" → searches CURRENT_STATUS + headlights
• History/Decision: "Why did we choose PostgreSQL?" → searches WORKLOG + tire tracks
• File lookup: "Find all docs about caching" → searches FILE_INDEX
• Synthesis: "All discussions about authentication" → comprehensive search across all layers

→ See [recall.md](recall.md) for the layered search protocol and output format.

/doc-harness (no arguments)

Inspect the current directory and suggest the right next step:

• All 4 core files present (CLAUDE.md, CURRENT_STATUS.md, FILE_INDEX.md, WORKLOG.md) → suggest /doc-harness check.
• No Doc Harness files at all → suggest /doc-harness init (clean init or mid-project adoption per init.md Step 2).
• Partial state (some files present, others missing or malformed) → suggest /doc-harness init in mid-project adoption mode (see init.md Step 2 branch (b)/(c)); do NOT suggest check on a broken installation.

Then show this help summary.

Core Principle: "Write It Down or Lose It"

Information in context will eventually be completely lost. Important information must be written to a file and registered in FILE_INDEX. Not written = lost. Not registered = undiscoverable = effectively lost.

Context-aware corollary: if your runtime exposes a context-window usage metric (percentage or token count), treat low remaining context (~<20%) as an immediate trigger to flush CURRENT_STATUS before the next tool call, and consider a phase transition if the car body holds substantial unsaved work (see spec.md §11.2 bullet 4 for the concrete threshold). Compression is involuntary session end — preemptive writes are the only defense.

Reference Documents

• init.md — Read when executing /doc-harness init. Covers clean init, mid-project adoption, partial-state repair, and optional inter-project inbox/outbox setup.
• check.md — Read when executing /doc-harness check. Audit procedures for file health, recovery-chain soundness, mid-transition detection, and inbox status.
• sync.md — Read when executing /doc-harness sync. Drift repair, date refresh, file registration, phase-transition and archival triggers.
• flush.md — Read when executing /doc-harness flush. Emergency save with systematic context-to-document extraction.
• recall.md — Read when executing /doc-harness recall. Layered search protocol for retrieving information from registered documents.
• resume.md — Read when executing /doc-harness resume. Structured state recovery with Recovery Chain execution, Recovery Report synthesis, and Understanding Verification.
• operational_rules.md — The operational rules embedded verbatim into every project's CLAUDE.md at init time. Carries the <!-- doc-harness-ops-version --> version tag so the check command can detect stale embeddings.
• spec.md — Complete Doc Harness specification (14 chapters + 5 appendices). Authoritative — all other files derive from it. Has a Table of Contents at the top for navigation without full-read.