Project

Architectonic layer: main CLI and adaptive profiles Live work contract when needed: Rail

Status: experimental, pre-1.0. This package provides source-grounded project structure and procedures. Templates are not project facts until instantiated from sources, explicit decisions, labeled assumptions, or preserved unknowns.

A project is a standalone bounded operating unit, not merely a repository and not a subordinate object that requires an organization.

npx architectonic@latest init my-project --preset project --source npm

Use it for:

• purpose, scope, users, and success conditions;
• canonical sources and current architecture;
• decisions, risks, assumptions, and open questions;
• specifications, plans, task decomposition, verification, reconciliation, and handoff.

project explains the work. Rail coordinates the work. When a project needs durable multi-session or multi-agent execution, bind one Rail ledger—normally operations/ledger.json—as the only authority for live selection, ownership, dependencies, status, and completion evidence. Specifications, plans, task files, roadmaps, changelogs, and handoffs remain source and context artifacts; they do not become competing queues.

Small, short-lived projects may omit Rail. Add it when live work must survive a handoff, coordinate actors, or be selected without relying on chat history.

Promote to project-system when the project also needs its own knowledge corpus, reusable procedures, and upkeep:

npx architectonic@latest init my-project --preset project-system --source npm

Neither profile requires constitution or identity. Add organization governance or actor authority only when the project actually depends on those boundaries.

See STANDALONE.md and START_HERE.md.