Delete Legacy Command Groups Plan

Status

Spec locked 2026-06-11 after two parallel adversarial rounds (both initially rejected; all findings verified against code and folded: the config-command integration, the binding.ts carve-out, the narrowed 5.1 wording, the concepts.md section, the constraint rewording). Plan drafted 2026-06-11. Implementation not started.

The main move:

Delete the workspace and initiative command groups and everything only
they consumed — about −13k lines — while the planning-home contract,
legacy metadata display, and all user data stay byte-identical.

Source Of Truth

Start from spec.md (this folder). Also keep nearby:

• ../../roadmap.md (5.1 criteria with the narrowed sequencing wording, Rules We Should Not Forget)
• ../store-rename-and-guidance/spec.md (the 1.4 surfaces this slice must not regress: vocabulary sweep, store teaching, template guards)

Sequencing: stacks on the 1.4 tip. Phase 3 slices assume these groups are gone (no more second meanings to design around).

User-Facing Frame

• "Show me only the product that exists: roots, stores, the lifecycle."
• "Don't touch my files — old initiative folders and workspace state stay where they are."
• "If an old change carries initiative metadata, keep showing it to me."

Goals

• Delete the command layer (15 files), the orphaned core (5 workspace modules + the collections tree), the completions entries, the workspace-profile integration in config, the dead docs, and the tests of all of it.
• Keep planning-home, legacy display, initiative_option_removed, the store group, and the 1.3/1.4 guarantees green and unchanged.
• Commit deletion-ledger.md (39 removed diagnostic codes + the dead-export carve-outs owned by 4.1).
• Report the net LOC delta.

Non-Goals

• No changes to schemas/workspace-planning/, the workspace-planning mode value, planning-home behavior, or the template guards.
• No user-data deletion or migration; no doctor warnings about orphaned view state (4.1's problem space).
• No behavior changes beyond the spec's three named ones (update detection block; config workspace integration; the constraint-string rewording).

Deletion Map (from the spec, re-verified at execution time)

Every deletion below is executed with a grep-before-delete: list the module's importers; if anything outside the deletion set imports it, stop and re-plan rather than force.

Wave 1 — command layer and registrations

• src/commands/workspace.ts, src/commands/workspace/ (11 files), src/commands/initiative.ts.
• src/cli/index.ts: imports (~21, 23), registrations (~349, 351), the findWorkspaceRoot update-detection block (~205-210) and its import (~24).
• src/commands/config.ts: the WorkspaceConfigProfileContext interface (49-52), workspace context resolution (199-211), drift-warning workspace branch (228-252), apply-guidance workspace branch (254-261), the core-preset call sites (523-524), the apply-to-workspace exec flow (674-697), and the workspace imports (25-29).

Wave 2 — orphaned core and barrels

• src/core/workspace/{registry,openers,open-surface,skills,link-input}.ts; prune src/core/workspace/index.ts exports to the kept pair (foundation, state-io — legacy-state is not barrel-exported; its consumers import it directly).
• src/core/collections/ whole tree; remove its barrel line from src/core/index.ts.
• Keep: binding.ts (foundation depends on it), foundation.ts, state-io.ts, legacy-state.ts, planning-home.ts.
• Reword the constraint string at src/core/change-status-policy.ts:99.

Wave 3 — completions and docs

• src/core/completions/command-registry.ts: delete the workspace (~251-407) and initiative (~502-589) group entries (the parity test enforces lockstep with Wave 1).
• docs/cli.md: workspace section (~179-349), the six openspec workspace ... rows in the agent-compatible table (51-56), initiative rows/sections (~63-64, ~444-491), summary-table rows (~10 — and the kept Stores row's cell text, which lists initiative create/show/list, gets an in-row edit), and the two openspec workspace update instructions in the Configuration Commands section (1178, 1180).
• docs/workspaces-beta/ deleted; docs/concepts.md "Coordination Workspaces" section (~52-194) deleted.

Wave 4 — tests

• Delete whole: test/commands/workspace.test.ts, workspace.interactive.test.ts, workspace-open.test.ts, workspace-initiative-open.test.ts, initiative.test.ts, test/core/workspace/skills.test.ts, test/core/collections/ (tree), test/helpers/path-env.ts.
• Partial edits: test/commands/config-profile.test.ts (the workspace-profile helper at 134-172 and the four workspace cases at 422-516; keep the project-apply coverage at ~402), test/core/store/registry.test.ts (initiatives-collection portions, ~615-624 plus the import at line 11; binding tests stay), test/core/workspace/foundation.test.ts (deleted-module portions only; state-shape tests stay), and test/core/completions/command-registry.test.ts (remove the now-obsolete initiative carve-out at ~157-161 in the --store description walk — a deliberate fourth partial edit named in the spec). No expectations currently pin the reworded constraint string; the new pin lives in the Wave 5 test, and change-initiative-link.test.ts stays unchanged.
• Keep green unchanged: change-initiative-link.test.ts, test/core/planning-home.test.ts, test/core/workspace/legacy-state.test.ts, store suite, journey, vocabulary sweep.

Wave 5 — new tests and the ledger

• New tests (in an existing suitable file or a small test/commands/legacy-groups-removed.test.ts):
  • openspec workspace list / openspec initiative list → unknown command, exit 1 (runCLI, built binary).
  • --help lists neither group (in-process registry/program checks are already enforced by parity; the e2e check covers help output).
  • Update fall-through: view-state dir, openspec update → standard no-project error, no workspace mention.
  • User-data survival: store with initiatives/ + XDG view state; run store list, store doctor, store remove <other>, update, status, new change; compare trees before/after with the snapshotDirectory approach from test/cli-e2e/store-lifecycle.test.ts:62-80 (relpath→content map).
  • Legacy display: the human-readable Initiative: <store>/<id> line is pinned nowhere today — assert it here over a legacy-metadata fixture (a plain status run). change-initiative-link.test.ts stays unchanged (it pins the JSON field and the flag rejection).
  • Planning-home mode pin: status --json over a .openspec-workspace/view.yaml fixture asserts actionContext.mode === 'workspace-planning' and the reworded read-only constraint string. (Plan-review finding: no existing test asserts the mode — planning-home.test.ts checks only PlanningHome.kind.)
• deletion-ledger.md: the 39 codes, generated with a precise rg -o "(workspace|initiative)_[a-z_]+" src test | sort -u inventory before and after (classifying data fields like workspace_skills separately from diagnostic codes), plus the dead-export carve-outs (findWorkspaceRoot, isWorkspaceRoot, resolveStoreBinding, createPathStoreBinding, createRegisteredStoreBinding) each with owner 4.1.

Execution Order

One checkpoint, one commit (the waves are not independently shippable — the build only compiles with all of them done):

1. Wave 1 + 2 together (compiler-driven: delete files, chase the import errors through barrels and config.ts).
2. Wave 3 (parity test forces completions lockstep; docs mechanical).
3. Wave 4 + 5 (test deletions, partial edits, new tests, ledger).
4. pnpm run build, full pnpm test, built-binary smoke (workspace/initiative unknown; --help; store group intact), and the explicit pointer gate: grep -rn "openspec workspace\|openspec initiative" docs/ src/ .codex/ must return nothing (the vocabulary sweep does not police these — workspace/initiative are not retired tokens).
5. Capture net LOC delta (git diff --shortstat HEAD~1) for the changelog; commit.

If the suite reveals a consumer the grep missed, stop, record the correction in the spec (ground truth), and re-run — never force a deletion through by stubbing.

Risks And Guardrails

• Hidden consumers through barrels: src/core/index.ts re-exports everything; a kept module may import a deleted symbol via the barrel rather than directly. The compiler catches imports; grep each deleted export name too (string-based access or re-export chains).
• The config command edit is behavior, not just deletion: keep config profile working globally; only the workspace branch goes. Its tests define the kept behavior — edit them deliberately.
• registry.test.ts surgery: the initiatives-collection block sits inside a kept file; delete only that describe/it scope and its imports, keep binding coverage.
• Vocabulary sweep stays green: deleted docs can't regress it, but the new test file must not introduce retired tokens (use the established concatenation constants if needed — likely unnecessary since workspace/initiative are not retired tokens).
• User-data test isolation: build the fixture store + view state in temp XDG dirs; hash with a stable tree walk (reuse the journey test's approach in store-lifecycle.test.ts).
• LOC delta accuracy: report git diff --shortstat of the single implementation commit, splitting src/test/docs in the changelog note.

Done Definition

• All spec acceptance scenarios pass; the implementation commit is on codex/store-root-parity with the full suite green.
• deletion-ledger.md committed; net LOC delta recorded in the changelog.
• Roadmap 5.1 first-tranche boxes ticked (cleanup plan written, cleanup done, tests/review checks pass), pointer moved to 3.1.