Introduction

This book contains the governance documentation for govctl, an opinionated CLI for RFC-driven software development.

How This Book Is Organized

Specifications

RFCs (Requests for Comments) are the normative specifications that define govctl’s behavior. They are constitutional law — implementation must conform to them.

• RFC-0000: The governance framework itself. Start here to understand the core concepts: RFCs, Clauses, ADRs, and Work Items.
• RFC-0001: Lifecycle state machines for all artifact types.

Decisions

ADRs (Architectural Decision Records) document significant design choices. They explain why things are built a certain way.

Work Items

Work Items track units of work from inception to completion. They provide an audit trail of what was done and when.

The Data Model

All governance artifacts have a Single Source of Truth (SSOT) in the gov/ directory:

gov/
├── config.toml           # govctl configuration
├── rfc/                  # RFC-NNNN/rfc.json + clauses/
├── adr/                  # ADR-NNNN-*.toml
└── work/                 # WI-YYYY-MM-DD-NNN-*.toml

The markdown files in this book are rendered projections — generated from the SSOT by govctl render. Each includes a SHA-256 signature for tampering detection.

Phase Discipline

govctl enforces a strict phase lifecycle:

spec → impl → test → stable

• spec: Defining what will be built. No implementation work permitted.
• impl: Building what was specified.
• test: Verifying implementation matches specification.
• stable: Released for production use.

Phases cannot be skipped. This discipline ensures specifications precede implementation.

Getting Started

1. Read RFC-0000 to understand the governance model
2. Follow the Getting Started guide to install and initialize
3. Learn about RFCs, ADRs, and Work Items