North-star guidance
A working reference for people building, reviewing, or explaining Katra Forge. It condenses the governing corpus while keeping every source addressable.
The operating idea
Preserve human intent from first expression to verified handoff. Make evidence inspectable, authority explicit, and interruption recoverable.
Soval should make the governed path the easiest path. Katra Forge should automate deterministic mechanics while leaving consequential meaning and authority with the accountable human or component owner.
Daily practice
Fast check: What did the human ask? What is the exact current state? What effect is proposed? Who may authorize it? What evidence would prove the actual result?
Bound source snapshot
This section describes the source commit displayed below, not the current deployment. The hosted workroom now supports accounts, saved threads, AI drafting, and export. Check live repository and release evidence before relying on a current-state claim.
Employee tool
Use the graph explorer to inspect your retained records, work threads and explicit source links. It shows personal work lineage. For system components and their responsibilities, use the Architecture page.
Authority stays put. The graph is a read-only derived view. It cannot change repository state, approve work, or authorize deployment, publication, or release.
Planning baseline
These are compact operating summaries. The exact repository records remain controlling.
| Decision | North-star consequence |
|---|---|
| DEC-001/002 | Katra Forge owns the idea-to-final-PRD system path; delivering Katra Forge is distinct from implementing a managed subject. |
| DEC-003/004/005 | Smusma owns inquiry continuity; the selected repository is The-Telling/Katra-Forge; canonical identity requires authoritative admission and verified readback. |
| DEC-006 | Begin as a modular monolith with one relational transaction boundary, an outbox, and sagas—not distributed transactions. |
| DEC-007/008 | Keep generic state mechanics separate from Katra product semantics; use a closed typed requirements core with namespaced profiles. |
| DEC-009 | Keep review-ready candidate, human-approved pending admission, and final PRD as distinct states. |
| DEC-010 | Default unclassified sources to Restricted; machines cannot lower classification; redaction, deletion, restore, and retention remain governed. |
| DEC-011/012 | Use provider-neutral host boundaries; capture only deliberate, revocable submissions; ask at most one consequential question per turn. |
| DEC-013/015 | One inquiry may form zero-to-many explicit children; one primary workstream exists per scope and parallel lines require typed forks. |
| DEC-016/017 | External projects are observe-and-verify only; book proof ends at approved PRD plus typed The Telling handoff, without manuscript or canon authority. |
| DEC-018/019 | A versioned N−1 ledger governs bootstrap; initial formation may use the bounded human-authored Diftor-compatible evidence path. |
| DEC-020 | Kolinahr begins as the cognitive method; later architecture gives the knowledge-management application a separately bounded Kolinahr identity. |
Full source coverage
This index was generated by reading and digest-verifying every file from the exact source tree. It exposes titles, paths, roles, types, and governing links—not document bodies.
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