Contract-First Agentic Delivery

A lightweight, reusable development process for software delivery with AI. Project intent is narrowed through a charter, roadmap, milestone delivery plan, and—only when useful—implementation plans. Developer requests authorize work within their scope; verification evidence replaces manual lifecycle states.

Use as a Codex skill

The self-contained skill is in skills/contract-first-delivery. Install that directory into your Codex skills directory, or install it from this repository with the Codex skill installer after the repository is published.

Adopting projects identify themselves with docs/development/process.md. Once adopted, Codex can select the skill automatically for planning, implementation, review, and status work in that repository.

Initialize a project

From the installed skill directory:

./scripts/initialize.ps1 -ProjectPath C:\path\to\project -ProcessSource https://example.com/development-process/tree/v0.1.0

If the first milestone is known:

./scripts/initialize.ps1 -ProjectPath C:\path\to\project -ProcessSource https://example.com/development-process/tree/v0.1.0 -Milestone v0.1

The initializer reads the process version from the skill's VERSION file and does not overwrite existing files. -ProcessVersion remains available only for testing or intentional version overrides.

Create later artefacts with consistent paths and automatically assigned identifiers:

./scripts/new-artifact.ps1 -ProjectPath C:\path\to\project -Type implementation-plan -Milestone v0.1 -Name authentication

Supported types are milestone, implementation-plan, architecture-decision, and change-record.

Validate an adopted project with:

./scripts/validate.ps1 -ProjectPath C:\path\to\project

Maintainers can exercise the complete skill in an isolated temporary project:

./scripts/test-skill.ps1

Project structure

docs/development/
  process.md
  project-charter.md
  roadmap.md
  status.md
  architecture/
    overview.md
    decisions/
  planning/
    change-intake.md
    changes/
  delivery/
    v0.1/
      delivery-plan.md
      status.md
      implementation/
        001-feature-name.md

Only the base documents are created automatically. Milestone and implementation artefacts are added when the work warrants them.