Repository Standards gives a repository a maintainer's shared conventions in one command: contribution and agent instructions, skills, templates, and checks that keep files in line, taken from a published, versioned set. Repo Canon is a ready-made set of conventions to start from.

A standards source is a repository's published, versioned conventions; Repo Canon is one. A profile selects a complete set of those conventions. Adoption applies that set: it installs shared files and skills, adapts project documentation, and runs the publisher's checks and setup commands. An inspection previews those changes; an update applies a new selection to an already configured repository. Rules are the installed requirements that files must keep satisfying.

Installation

On macOS or Linux, use stable Node.js 24 or 26 with its bundled npm, and Git 2.32 or newer. Node.js 22, odd majors, prereleases and future majors are excluded. To adopt Repo Canon, give your coding agent this prompt in your repository:

Run `npx --yes @lutzseverino/repo-standards adopt https://github.com/lutzseverino/repo-canon --json` in this repository and follow what it prints.

Or install the adoption skill from a verified release tag.

To run it yourself, run adopt in a terminal, from your committed, clean Git working tree:

npx @lutzseverino/repo-standards adopt https://github.com/lutzseverino/repo-canon

At a terminal, adopt asks questions and guides your edits. For an agent, it starts the run when nothing is open, and otherwise prints an answers-file template and next steps. It installs and pins the CLI it ran; no manual CLI installation is needed. See adoption for both paths and installation for prerequisites and other tools.

Author your own standards source

To publish your own conventions instead, author them in a separate standards repository: read authoring for that workflow and the author format for the source format. Adopt a published source with the same command and its public GitHub URL in place of Repo Canon's.

Features

• Validate independently authored standards and complete profiles.
• Inspect published GitHub versions, exact replacements, and contextual scope.
• Adopt through disclosed operations and agent assessments, retaining evidence.
• Update any pin, the source, or the profile in one run, reviewing discarded edits from Git.
• Report available updates and render inspections and runs as Markdown summaries.
• Propose every available update as one rolling pull request through the opt-in update action.
• Run the adopted checks on demand against the working tree.
• Install each declaration's rules and print the rules that cover a path.
• Discover sources by topic without automatically selecting or adopting them.

Usage

Update an adopted project with the same command, omitting the source:

npx @lutzseverino/repo-standards adopt

Choose a version and profile, review the proposed changes, and follow the prompts or the agent's decisions. Setup that changes your hosting platform's settings can be deferred while adoption completes locally. The architecture contracts describe the product's behavior.

Releases are frequent and carry no stability promise. Every release must update from the previous one in one adopt, without hand edits; published acceptance verifies that path. Check outdated to stay current, or opt in to automated update pull requests. See the release policy.

Documentation

Documentation

Contributing

Contribution guidelines

License

MIT License