Release-Readiness Report — simplify-context-and-workspace-model

Committed 2026-06-11 on codex/store-root-parity (merge to main deliberately deferred per the run's standing instruction). This is the 6.1 capstone's final deliverable: the product, proven as one thing.

Verdict: release-ready, with the known gaps below mapped to Later Ideas. No open P1/P2 findings anywhere in the capstone ledgers.

The five-minute new-user story

You install OpenSpec and run two commands:

openspec store setup team-plans --path ~/openspec/team-plans
openspec new change my-first-change --store team-plans

That is the whole journey to a working, store-scoped change — two commands, two concepts (a store is a standalone planning repo registered on your machine; a change is the unit of work), and every step's output prints the exact next command. From there the lifecycle is status → instructions per artifact → archive, each carrying --store in its own hints. Your code repos connect with one line (store: team-plans in openspec/config.yaml) after which the lifecycle works from inside them with zero flags; project roots can declare references: for read-only upstream context with fetch recipes. openspec doctor answers "is my setup healthy"; openspec context answers "what OpenSpec roots are related by declarations"; and personal worksets open the planning repo plus whichever code folders the user chooses. Everything has --json with a documented agent contract (docs/agent-contract.md).

This story is not aspirational: journey 4 ran the store/pointer path cold, and the later workset dogfood opened a planning store next to code folders through explicit --member composition. The code-repo relationship abstraction is now recorded as a removed experiment, not current product proof.

What this roadmap shipped (the sum)

• One root model. A single resolution precedence (explicit --store → nearest qualifying root → declared pointer → hint/implicit) implemented exactly once and verified hold across all command entry points. Stores are standalone OpenSpec repos in a typed local registry.
• Declared references, no machinery. references: are read-only context declarations; nothing clones, syncs, or enforces edit boundaries. Unresolvable references degrade to warnings with pasteable fixes.
• Two read-only composition surfaces. doctor (relationship health, four separated categories, findings exit 0) and context (the working set as agent brief / human listing / editor view).
• The old model deleted, not hidden. The workspace/initiative command groups, state model, schema, accepted specs, and template guidance are gone (−12,903 lines in the first tranche; at the current PR head, src/ remains net −3,189 lines vs origin/main across the whole delta).

Audit results (full records in this folder)

• Persona journeys (journeys.md): all four pass — fresh team (standing e2e), layered PM-to-dev (new e2e), externalized planning (new e2e, zero --store flags), cold-start agent (live headless dogfood).
• Usability (usability-audits.md): 55-wrong-turn error catalog (all failures fixed); vocabulary sweep clean across live sweep roots and generated guidance, with planning-history artifacts excluded by design; time-to-first-success measured live at 2 commands / 2 concepts.
• Technical (technical-audits.md): single-resolver and dependency-direction invariants HOLD; module sizes bounded; the agent contract documented and verified (docs/agent-contract.md); dead code reduced to a recorded P3 queue.
• Whole-delta gauntlet (gauntlet.md): four mechanisms (/code-review max, a 32-agent adversarial Workflow, codex, completeness critic); 2 P1 + 13 P2 findings, all fixed in 37ad867 and live re-verified, plus the cheap P3 set. Final suite: 97 files, 1,761 tests green; all 36 accepted specs validate.

The autonomous-decision ledger

Every Decided autonomously (review me) entry lives in the roadmap changelog (18 marked entries plus per-slice recorded amendments). The ones that shape the product:

1. The earlier code-repo relationship experiment is superseded and removed; keep only the research note for a future multi-repo coordination design.
2. Declared-pointer roots resolve through the same store resolver as --store (3.2); corrupt store metadata stays a resolution failure — no doctor-only resolution fork (3.6 amendment).
3. openspec doctor is top-level and root-scoped; health findings of any severity exit 0 (3.6).
4. 4.1's surface is openspec context (not view/open); opening is REPLACED by emitted artifacts — no editor launching; binding.ts and the template guards died with the state model (widened carve-outs).
5. The Phase 5 remainder deleted the workspace-planning schema, the four beta change folders, and the four wholly-workspace accepted specs; mixed specs got bounded excisions (L2 decided).
6. Capstone fixes: the nearest walk now requires a QUALIFYING openspec/ (planning shape or config); every --json failure emits one status document; planningHome was restored to status JSON as a published agent contract (reversing a planned dead-code collapse — PlanningHomeSummary is live again); store remove commits the registry removal before deleting files; prompt-render boundaries sanitize cloned content.

Known gaps, mapped

What remains before users

One action: merge codex/store-root-parity to main (every roadmap box except "Merged to main" is ticked) and run the release process (CI matrix, version, changelog). The branch holds 80+ commits, each with a green full suite at commit time.