A set of Claude Code and GitHub Copilot plugins providing the AI Literacy framework's complete development workflow — harness engineering, agent orchestration, literate programming, CUPID code review, and the three enforcement loops
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Aug 26, 2026
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A plugin marketplace for Claude Code and GitHub Copilot CLI shipping opinionated tools for the AI Literacy framework — harness engineering, agent orchestration, decision archaeology, governance, and model evaluation.
Add the marketplace, install the plugin(s) you want, and you have a fully operational habitat for AI-assisted development.
New to the project? Start with ONBOARDING.md or browse the docs site.
| Plugin | Version | What it does | Docs |
|---|---|---|---|
ai-literacy-superpowers | v0.91.0 | The flagship. Harness engineering, agent orchestration, literate programming, CUPID code review, compound learning, and the three enforcement loops. 41 skills, 20 agents, 32 commands. | docs |
model-cards | v0.1.0 | Researches and authors Mitchell-extended model cards from a model name. Tiered source strategy (provider docs → HuggingFace → arXiv → web), refusal-on-unconfirmed-existence honesty rule. | docs |
diagnostic-legibility | v0.11.0 | Hosts agents accountable for maintaining human understanding. Ships the diagnostic-legibility agent — builds and self-challenges two models of a codebase scope (architectural moving parts and domain concepts) via a five-question retained-challenge cycle, then cross-checks the two collections against each other via a five-question per-direction cycle. The /diagnose command surfaces the mutually-corrected models on demand as a readable report. The ConceptualPipelineMap template adds a standalone, presentation-agnostic flow-perspective data model; the agent's scope-resolution mode answers "what does my task touch?"; its pipeline mode traces control flow within that bound and cross-checks all three collections; the /pipeline-map "<task>" command renders the task-scoped map as a self-contained HTML flowchart (pinned, SHA-verified Mermaid inlined; no CDN); and --predict-change adds an opt-in change-site prediction (which stages the task will modify and where it will insert new ones), disclosed as a prediction, never a directive. | docs |
The bulk of this README documents the ai-literacy-superpowers plugin specifically — its skills, agents, commands, hooks, templates, enforcement loops, and pipelines. For model-cards, see its README and its docs. Future sister plugins will land in this marketplace under <plugin-name>/ with their own docs at docs/plugins/<plugin-name>/.
# Claude Code
claude plugin marketplace add Habitat-Thinking/ai-literacy-superpowers
# GitHub Copilot CLI
copilot plugin marketplace add Habitat-Thinking/ai-literacy-superpowers
# Claude Code
claude plugin install ai-literacy-superpowers # the flagship
claude plugin install model-cards # the sister
# GitHub Copilot CLI
copilot plugin install ai-literacy-superpowers@ai-literacy-superpowers
copilot plugin install model-cards@ai-literacy-superpowers
You can install one, the other, or both. Once installed, each plugin's skills, agents, hooks, and commands (or prompts) are available in any session within your project.
Commands are available as
/command-namein Claude Code and as/prompt-namein Copilot CLI.
New template content is found by running /harness-upgrade, which compares
your harness against the plugin's template directly. Nothing nudges you
automatically: the marker that used to drive a session-start nudge tracked the
plugin version rather than template content, so it fired on every release
whether or not the template had changed.
claude plugin list
When a new version is released, update your local installation:
# Claude Code
claude plugin update ai-literacy-superpowers@ai-literacy-superpowers
# Copilot CLI
/plugin update ai-literacy-superpowers
Check the CHANGELOG for what changed between versions.
After updating, run /harness-upgrade to review and adopt any new template
content (constraints, GC rules, optional blocks) into your HARNESS.md.
If you maintain your own marketplace that includes this plugin, refresh the index so new versions are discoverable:
claude plugin marketplace update Habitat-Thinking/ai-literacy-superpowers
This pulls the latest plugin.json metadata (version, description,
keywords) into the marketplace index. Users who have already installed
the plugin still need to run claude plugin update separately.
See How to Update the Plugin for the full guide.
After installation, run these commands to set up your project:
# Full habitat setup (recommended for new projects)
/superpowers-init
# Harness-only setup (if you want constraints without the agent pipeline)
/harness-init
# Check the status of your harness
/harness-status
# Run a health check
/harness-health
# Run an AI literacy assessment
/assess
/superpowers-init sets up the complete habitat: CLAUDE.md, HARNESS.md, AGENTS.md, MODEL_ROUTING.md, REFLECTION_LOG.md, the full agent team, skills, hooks, and CI workflow templates. Use this for new projects.
/harness-init sets up only the harness: HARNESS.md with starter constraints and GC rules. Use this if you want the constraint and enforcement machinery without the full agent pipeline.
Setting a harness up is the easy half. Once it exists, this is how it changes:
/reflect → a human reads the reflections → HARNESS.md → /harness-sync
HARNESS.md is the master and it is human-curated. /reflect captures what was
noticed and routes it by signal type; a human reviews the corpus, with agentic
support, and decides what is worth writing down. /harness-sync then brings the
convention files for Cursor, Copilot and Windsurf into line.
/harness-constrain helps author a constraint. /harness-audit checks whether
what HARNESS.md declares still matches reality. Git history is the record of
what changed and why.
This plugin works with both Claude Code and GitHub Copilot CLI from the same repository. The formats have converged:
| Component | Claude Code | Copilot CLI | Shared? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Skills | skills/*/SKILL.md | skills/*/SKILL.md | Identical |
| Agents | agents/*.agent.md | agents/*.agent.md | Identical |
| Hooks | hooks/hooks.json | hooks/hooks.json | Identical |
| Commands | commands/*.md | .github/prompts/*.prompt.md | Translated |
| Instructions | Via templates/CLAUDE.md | .github/copilot-instructions.md | Adapted |
ai-literacy-superpowers — what it shipsThe remaining sections of this README document the ai-literacy-superpowers plugin in detail. For model-cards, see its README and its docs.
Code quality, harness engineering, and governance knowledge that agents read when working in your codebase.
| Skill | What it provides |
|---|---|
| literate-programming | Knuth's five rules — code as literature, reader-first |
| cupid-code-review | Terhorst-North's five properties — composable, unix, predictable, idiomatic, domain-based |
| github-actions-supply-chain | CI hardening checklist — SHA pinning, permissions, dependabot |
| dependency-vulnerability-audit | Go and Maven CVE scanning procedures |
| docker-scout-audit | Docker image CVE triage and remediation |
| harness-engineering | Foundational concepts — the three components, promotion ladder, enforcement timing |
| context-engineering | Writing conventions precise enough for humans and LLMs to enforce |
| dynamic-workflows | When/which/how to author ephemeral multi-agent workflows — six patterns, election rubric, INV-1/INV-2 governance |
| constraint-design | Designing enforceable constraints with the verification slot model |
| garbage-collection | Entropy-fighting patterns and the auto-fix safety rubric |
| verification-slots | The unified interface for deterministic and agent-based checks |
| ai-literacy-assessment | Assessment instrument — scan repo, ask questions, produce timestamped assessment with prioritised improvement plans |
| harness-observability | Four-layer observability guidance — snapshot format, telemetry export, meta-observability checks |
| convention-extraction | Five extraction questions, artefact mapping, four-element anatomy — surfaces tacit team conventions |
| cross-repo-orchestration | Git-mediated (L4) and specification-mediated (L5) patterns for syncing artefacts and governing portfolios |
| secrets-detection | Gitleaks-based secret scanning — configuration, baselining, and CI integration |
| auto-enforcer-action | Automatic PR constraint checking via GitHub Actions |
| convention-sync | Syncing HARNESS.md conventions to Cursor, Copilot, and Windsurf convention files |
| fitness-functions | Architectural fitness functions as GC rules — periodic checks for layer boundaries, coupling, and complexity |
| model-sovereignty | Decision framework for model selection, hosting, fine-tuning, and vendor independence |
| literacy-improvements | Prioritised improvement plan mapping assessment gaps to plugin commands and skills |
| portfolio-assessment | Multi-repo assessment aggregation — level distribution, shared gaps, and portfolio improvement plans |
| portfolio-dashboard | Generate a self-contained HTML dashboard from portfolio assessment data with trend visualisation |
| team-api | Create or update a Team Topologies Team API document with AI literacy portfolio data |
| cost-tracking | Quarterly AI cost capture — record spend, compare trends, inform model routing |
| cost-estimation | Prospective cost/token/time estimation — range-with-confidence estimate records, snapshot-grounded dollar figures, the prospective sibling of cost-tracking |
| governance-constraint-design | Falsifiable governance constraint authoring — three-frame translation, anti-patterns gallery, governance constraint template |
| governance-audit-practice | Governance audit methodology — five-stage semantic drift model, debt scoring matrix, frame alignment review |
| governance-observability | Governance metrics catalogue, snapshot format extension, and HTML dashboard specification |
| advocatus-diaboli | Adversarial spec review — six-category objection framework, evidence requirements, steel-manned challenge before plan approval |
| choice-cartographer | Decision archaeology — six-lens map of implicit choices a spec has made (forces, alternatives, defaults, patterns, consequences, coherence); routing rule partitions findings between the Cartographer and the diaboli |
| component-design-with-tdad | Design-time methodology for new plugin components — names the five design questions implied by the four-layer TDAD architecture (component type, layer targeting, scenario shape, new-vs-modification, scenario-vs-finding); loadable by spec-writer, tdd-agent, or human brainstorming |
| cognitive-reservoir | Watches the human verifier the harness cannot verify — four observable proxies, observed/inferred/asked confidence discipline, disjunctive thresholds, the decide-your-stop-first principle, and the honesty rule separating contested science (ego depletion, hungry judges) from the robust basis (vigilance decrement, switching cost); advisory-only, never a fatigue score |
| sentinel-design | Defines the sentinel agent category — the three-part signature (S1 read-only, S2 advisory-to-human, S3 explicit honesty rule), the near-miss gallery (why code-reviewer and harness-auditor don't qualify), the honesty-rule-before-detection-logic discipline, and the three anti-patterns (scoring the human, persisting human-state records, gating automatically) |
A coordinated team that handles the full development lifecycle. It splits into two families: sentinels, whose object of care is the human's understanding and judgement, and pipeline & harness agents, whose object of care is an artefact, the pipeline, or the harness.
Sentinel — any agent whose primary purpose is to protect and support the understanding and judgement of the human in the workflow. It informs, challenges, surfaces, or warns — it never fixes, writes, merges, or decides.
Sentinels are the answer to the human side of Margaret-Anne Storey's triple-debt model: where the pipeline and harness agents fight technical debt in the code, sentinels establish and protect the human's understanding, judgement, and discernment — holding back the cognitive and intent debt that accrue when AI produces output faster than a person can absorb it.
Every sentinel satisfies the three-part sentinel signature: S1
read-only trust boundary (no Write/Edit; Bash only for read-only
inspection), S2 advisory output a human disposes (no automated
action), and S3 an explicit epistemic honesty rule (it declares the
status of its claims). S1 is enforced deterministically — the
Sentinel integrity constraint fails CI if a
role: sentinel agent is granted Write/Edit. See the sentinel-design
skill for the near-miss gallery and authoring guidance.
The decision-discipline triad
(carpaccio, advocatus-diaboli, choice-cartographer) guards
decisions; the reservoir-warden guards the decider; the
cost-estimator guards the decision's inputs. The four cadence
sentinels guard the shape of the work around those decisions: the
coda guards the ending, the mast the pact, the wip-warden
the count, and the convener the room.
| Agent | Guards | Role | Trust boundary |
|---|---|---|---|
| carpaccio | Judgement scale | Cadence governor — runs at orchestrator step 0 before spec-writer; slices the raw task description into thin, end-to-end-complete pieces; hard gate on slice dispositions | Read only |
| advocatus-diaboli | Decisions at both gates | Adversarial reviewer — spec-time (premise/design focus, before plan approval) and code-time (risk/implementation focus, before integration); six-category objection record, human-cognition gate on dispositions at both gates | Read only |
| choice-cartographer | Understanding of implicit decisions | Decision-archaeology mapper — runs after spec-mode diaboli dispositions are resolved; emits choice stories (Henney pattern stories) for each material implicit decision; soft gate at plan approval, merge-time HARNESS constraint enforces resolution | Read only |
| reservoir-warden | The decider | Verifier-watch — counts observable proxies (session span, decision volume, context switches, wall-clock hour) over the recent git window, reports each with an observed/inferred/asked flag, and offers the single decide-your-stop-first recommendation when a threshold is crossed; persists no record of the human's state | Read only (no Write/Edit) |
| cost-estimator | The decision's inputs | Prospective-cost emitter — reads MODEL_ROUTING.md and the latest observability/costs/ snapshot, applies the cost-estimation methodology, and returns an estimate-record string (token + time ranges, dollar cost only when grounded) for a dispatcher to persist after a human disposes; refuses rather than fabricating an ungroundable estimate | Read only |
| coda | The ending | Session-close ritual — surfaces what was decided, what is left open, and the next action; parks open threads as append-only records for a later session to resume; returns record content for /coda to persist; never records why someone stopped | Read only |
| mast | The pact | Pact-keeper — recites a limit the person set in clear weather before measuring anything against it, so the recitation cannot be shaped by the moment; refuses to estimate spend it cannot observe; discloses its own check's blind spot; never gates | Read only |
| wip-warden | The count | Concurrency counter — counts live sessions against a limit the person declared, never inventing one; reports the count's honesty flag; watches sessions, never the human; says plainly that strict cannot compel | Read only |
| convener | The room | Counsel-bringer — runs at plan approval beside the cartographer; maps the roles and groups a spec affects and drafts the one concrete question worth asking each; soft gate at plan approval, complete-if-present merge constraint; never contacts anyone, in any medium, ever | Read only |
| Agent | Role | Trust boundary |
|---|---|---|
| orchestrator | Pipeline coordinator — dispatches agents in sequence | Full access |
| spec-writer | Updates specs and plans before any code is written | No Bash |
| tdd-agent | Writes failing tests from spec scenarios | Can execute tests |
| code-reviewer | Reviews code through CUPID and literate programming lenses | No Write |
| integration-agent | CHANGELOG, commit, PR, CI, merge, cleanup, reflection | Full git access |
| harness-discoverer | Read-only project scanner | Read only |
| harness-enforcer | Unified verification engine for all constraint types | Read + Bash |
| harness-gc | Periodic entropy fighter | Read + Write |
| harness-auditor | Meta-agent — checks whether the harness matches reality | Write to Status only |
| assessor | AI literacy assessment — scans repo, asks questions, applies fixes, recommends workflow changes | Read + Write |
| governance-auditor | Governance specialist — semantic drift analysis, debt inventory, three-frame alignment | Read + limited Write |
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
/superpowers-init | Guided setup — scaffolds the full habitat |
/superpowers-status | Health dashboard — harness, agents, learning, CI |
/harness-init | Harness-specific init |
/harness-status | Quick harness health read |
/harness-constrain | Add or promote a constraint |
/harness-gc | Manage and run garbage collection rules |
/harness-audit | Read-only diagnostic. Same engine as /harness-sync but prints findings without prompting to fix. Use for inspection-without-commitment, CI scripts, or the quarterly cadence anchor. |
/reflect | Capture a post-task reflection |
/worktree | Git worktree lifecycle — spin, merge, clean |
/assess | AI literacy assessment with immediate fixes, workflow recommendations, and prioritised improvement plans |
/harness-health | Harness health snapshot — enforcement ratio, trends, meta-observability checks |
/extract-conventions | Guided session — surfaces tacit team conventions and maps them to CLAUDE.md and HARNESS.md |
/harness-sync | Everyday lifecycle entry. Runs the shared audit-engine to detect drift across every surface (convention files, snapshot, Status section accuracy, ONBOARDING.md staleness, template, constraint regressions, recurring reflection patterns), presents a unified drift table tagged [auto]/[manual], and applies the fixes you select. Mechanical fixes (convention files, snapshot, Status) auto-apply via existing primitives; judgement-required fixes (ONBOARDING regen, template upgrade, constraint authoring) print suggested commands. |
/convention-sync | Sync HARNESS.md conventions to Cursor, Copilot, and Windsurf convention files |
/portfolio-assess | Multi-repo AI literacy assessment — aggregate across local repos, GitHub orgs, or topic tags |
/cost-capture | Capture AI tool cost data — record spend, compare to previous snapshot, update model routing |
/cost-estimate | Estimate a target's tokens, agent-compute time, and (when grounded) cost before it runs — dispatches the read-only cost-estimator agent, validates the record, and writes it to cost-estimates/ after you dispose (the prospective sibling of /cost-capture) |
/governance-constrain | Guided governance constraint authoring with three-frame alignment check |
/governance-audit | Deep governance investigation — semantic drift, debt inventory, frame alignment |
/governance-health | Governance health pulse check and dashboard generation |
/harness-upgrade | Discover and adopt new template content after a plugin upgrade |
/harness-onboarding | Generate a human-readable onboarding guide from harness state |
/observatory-verify | Verify all Observatory signal contracts against latest output files |
/carpaccio | Slice a task description into thin, end-to-end-complete pieces before spec-writer (cadence governor; runs at orchestrator step 0) |
/diaboli | Run the adversarial spec reviewer — produces objection record at docs/superpowers/objections/<slug>.md |
/choice-cartograph | Run the Choice Cartographer — produces choice-story record at docs/superpowers/stories/<slug>.md after spec-mode diaboli dispositions are resolved |
/harness-affordance | Manage the project's affordance inventory — discover scans config to produce a draft inventory; add and review planned |
/reservoir | Read-only advisory on you, the verifier — Read mode dispatches the reservoir-warden agent for a fuller cognitive-reservoir read; Tune mode helps you edit the HARNESS.md Cognitive reservoir block (thresholds, chronotype). Advisory-only, not a Constraint |
Opinionated defaults scaffolded by /superpowers-init:
MODEL_ROUTING.md guides cost-conscious model selection. It maps each agent to a model tier (most capable, standard, fast) based on the judgment required. The orchestrator consults it when dispatching agents — spec-writers and code-reviewers get the most capable model; implementers and integration agents get standard models. Token budget guidance prevents runaway costs.
All hooks are registered in hooks/hooks.json and active in every Claude Code session.
.md files being written or edited (deterministic, advisory)/harness-audit/harness-health/reflect to capture learningsframework.md modifications, nudges /reflect + /sync-repos + downstream README checksREFLECTION_LOG.md and nudges curation into AGENTS.md/governance-auditSee the Installation section above for the full marketplace + plugin install. In short:
claude plugin marketplace add Habitat-Thinking/ai-literacy-superpowers
claude plugin install ai-literacy-superpowers
cd your-project
Then in Claude Code:
/superpowers-init
The init command will:
/superpowers-status
Shows harness enforcement ratio, agent team configuration, compound learning state, model routing, and CI summary.
The plugin provides the agent pipeline pattern but does not ship language-specific implementers — these are created per project for each language in the stack. To create one:
go-implementer.md).claude/agents/<language>-implementer.md in your projectskills/<skill-name>/SKILL.md with YAML frontmatter (name, description with trigger conditions)references/ subdirectory for supporting materialcommands/<command-name>.md with YAML frontmatter (name, description)/<command-name> in Claude Code sessionshooks/scripts/<script-name>.shhooks/hooks.json under the appropriate event (PreToolUse, PostToolUse, or Stop)CLAUDE_PROJECT_DIR, etc.)Every mechanism in the plugin operates at one of three timescales:
| Loop | Trigger | Strictness | Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|
| Advisory | PreToolUse hook | Warn | Catch issues while context is fresh |
| Strict | CI on PR | Fail | Prevent violations from reaching main |
| Investigative | Scheduled GC + audit | Report | Fight slow entropy that gates miss |
ADVISORY LOOP (edit time — warn, do not block)
│
├── Hooks
│ ├── PostToolUse constraint gate Reads HARNESS.md commit-scoped constraints,
│ │ warns on violations during Write/Edit
│ ├── PreToolUse markdownlint check Runs markdownlint on .md files being
│ │ written or edited (deterministic)
│ ├── Stop drift check Detects CI/linter/dependency changes at
│ │ session end, nudges /harness-audit
│ ├── Stop snapshot staleness check Detects stale harness snapshot (> 30 days),
│ │ nudges /harness-health
│ ├── Stop reflection prompt Detects commits during session,
│ │ nudges /reflect to capture learnings
│ ├── Stop framework-change prompt Detects framework.md modifications,
│ │ nudges /reflect + /sync-repos +
│ │ downstream README checks
│ ├── Stop secrets check Scans for committed secrets using gitleaks
│ ├── Stop rotating GC check Runs one deterministic GC rule per session,
│ │ rotating by day-of-year
│ ├── Stop curation nudge Detects unpromoted reflections, nudges
│ │ curation into AGENTS.md
│ └── Stop governance drift check Detects governance file changes, nudges
│ /governance-audit
├── Context (read by agents at session start)
│ ├── CLAUDE.md Workflow rules, conventions, disciplines
│ ├── AGENTS.md Compound learning memory (human-curated)
│ ├── MODEL_ROUTING.md Model-tier guidance + token budgets
│ └── Skills (36) Domain knowledge for agents
│
└── Commands
├── /reflect Capture post-task learnings
└── /worktree spin|merge|clean Parallel agent isolation
STRICT LOOP (merge time — block until green)
│
├── CI Workflows (generated from templates)
│ ├── ci-github-actions.yml PR-scoped constraint enforcement
│ │ (markdownlint, gitleaks, shell checks)
│ ├── gc.yml Weekly GC for deterministic rules
│ ├── docs-build-check.yml mkdocs --strict at PR time
│ ├── spec-redaction-marker-check.yml Blocks HTML-comment redaction in specs
│ ├── tdad-tests-fast.yml TDAD Layers 0+1 fast-suite at PR time
│ ├── tdad-scenario-check.yml New plugin components must ship a scenario
│ └── ci-mutation-testing.yml Language-specific mutation testing
│
├── Agent Pipeline
│ ├── orchestrator Coordinates full pipeline
│ │ ├── GATE: objection adjudication User resolves objections before proceeding
│ │ ├── GATE: plan approval User reviews spec + adjudicated objections
│ │ └── GUARDRAIL: MAX_REVIEW_CYCLES=3
│ ├── spec-writer Spec + plan updates (no Bash)
│ ├── advocatus-diaboli Adversarial spec review (read-only)
│ ├── tdd-agent Failing tests from spec scenarios
│ ├── implementer(s) Makes tests green — user-created per
│ │ language, not shipped by the plugin
│ ├── code-reviewer CUPID + LP review (no Write)
│ └── integration-agent CHANGELOG, PR, CI, merge, reflection
│
└── Harness Constraints (HARNESS.md)
├── Deterministic Backed by CI tools
├── Agent-backed Backed by harness-enforcer
└── Unverified Declared intent, not yet automated
INVESTIGATIVE LOOP (scheduled — sweep for entropy)
│
├── Garbage Collection Rules (HARNESS.md)
│ ├── Weekly CI workflow (gc.yml) Deterministic rules: secret scanner,
│ │ snapshot staleness, shell checks
│ ├── Rotating Stop hook One deterministic GC rule per session
│ └── Agent-scoped rules Documentation freshness, command-prompt
│ sync, plugin manifest currency
├── Compound Learning
│ ├── REFLECTION_LOG.md Agent reflections (append-only)
│ └── AGENTS.md Human-curated from reflections
│
├── Harness Commands
│ ├── /harness-audit Full meta-verification
│ ├── /harness-health Snapshot with trends and meta-observability checks
│ ├── /harness-status Quick health read
│ └── /harness-gc Run GC checks on demand
│
└── Governance Commands
├── /governance-constrain Guided governance constraint authoring
├── /governance-audit Deep governance investigation
└── /governance-health Governance pulse check and dashboard
The three enforcement loops generate signals that, when collected, make the entire habitat observable. The plugin's mechanisms produce the data; observability tools (OpenTelemetry, Claude Code analytics, Grafana) make it visible.
| Panel | What it shows | Sources |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | Spend trend, model-tier distribution, cost per PR | Provider API, MODEL_ROUTING.md compliance |
| Quality | Coverage trend, mutation score trend, change failure rate | CI artifacts, mutation testing workflow |
| Adoption | Active AI users, sessions per developer, acceptance rate | Provider analytics |
| Habitat health | Harness enforcement ratio, compound learning growth, ALCI progression | /harness-status, REFLECTION_LOG.md, ALCI surveys |
Without observability, cost discipline is aspirational, mutation testing is a one-time experiment, and the harness is a document that may or may not match reality. With it, every mechanism gains an evidence layer.
The plugin includes a four-layer observability model for monitoring harness health over time:
| Layer | Question | How |
|---|---|---|
| Operational cadence | Is the harness running? | /harness-health generates snapshots; a Stop hook nudges when the last snapshot is older than 30 days |
| Trend visibility | How has the harness changed? | Snapshots are diffed to show deltas; --trends produces multi-period views |
| Telemetry export | Can I visualise this externally? | Snapshot data can be exported as OpenTelemetry metrics to any OTLP-compatible backend |
| Meta-observability | Is the observability itself working? | Five self-checks: snapshot currency, cadence compliance, learning flow, GC effectiveness, trend direction |
/harness-health generates structured markdown snapshots stored in observability/snapshots/. Each snapshot captures:
Trends are derived by diffing consecutive snapshots — no external tooling required.
/harness-health maintains a shields.io badge in the project README:
For teams that want external dashboards, the references/telemetry-export.md reference documents OTel metric names and a reference export script. The file-based approach (snapshots in git) is the default — telemetry export is optional.
skills/harness-observability/SKILL.mdcommands/harness-health.mdskills/harness-observability/references/meta-observability-checks.mdskills/harness-observability/references/snapshot-format.mdskills/harness-observability/references/telemetry-export.mdhooks/hooks.jsonscripts/update-health-badge.shWhen you use the orchestrator agent, it runs this pipeline:
orchestrator
→ spec-writer
→ advocatus-diaboli (spec mode — read-only, produces spec objection record)
→ GATE: objection adjudication — spec mode (user writes dispositions; gate blocked while any is `pending`)
→ GATE: plan approval (user reviews plan + adjudicated spec objection record)
→ tdd-agent
→ implementer(s) (parallel, one per language — user-created per project)
→ code-reviewer
→ GUARDRAIL: MAX_REVIEW_CYCLES=3 (escalate after 3 loops)
→ advocatus-diaboli (code mode — read-only, produces code objection record; runs once after loop exits)
→ GATE: integration approval — code mode (user writes dispositions; gate blocked while any is `pending`)
→ integration-agent (includes reflection step)
The spec objection adjudication gate raises premise-level challenges before any tests or code exist — the cheapest moment to change course. The plan approval gate catches bad plans before they become bad code. The loop guardrail prevents unbounded reviewer cycles. The code objection adjudication gate surfaces threat-model, failure-mode, and operational concerns visible in the implementation before merge.
The plugin ships the orchestrator, spec-writer, tdd-agent, code-reviewer, and integration-agent. Language-specific implementers are not included — each project creates its own based on the stack. See How to Extend for instructions.
Beneath the static agent pipeline sits an ephemeral execution substrate: dynamic workflows — self-authored, single-task multi-agent harnesses an agent writes, runs once, and discards. Each subagent gets a clean context window and its own model tier, which is what defeats the three failure modes a single long context is prone to: agentic laziness (declaring a multi-part job done after partial progress), self-preferential bias (an agent judging its own output), and goal drift. The conceptual model lives in the dynamic-workflows skill and the how-to guide.
Six composable patterns — classify-and-act, fan-out-and-synthesize, adversarial verification, generate-and-filter, tournament, and loop-until-done — are the building blocks. The plugin dogfoods them: the harness-enforcer fans out one verifier per constraint; code-reviewer reviews in a separate context; assessor/harness-auditor run deep-research scans; /reflect --mine mines the reflection log; and the orchestrator can route a task to a tournament, root-cause, or triage workflow.
Elect deliberately. Workflows cost more tokens and suit long-running, massively parallel, highly structured, or adversarial tasks — so they are opt-in, never reflexive. The four-question when-not-to-use rubric keeps the static pipeline the default; reaching for a workflow on a routine task is treated as over-orchestration.
Two governing invariants protect the curated harness from ephemeral churn:
HARNESS.md, AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md, MODEL_ROUTING.md) directly; discoveries flow through REFLECTION_LOG.md → human curates → AGENTS.md. A deterministic CI firewall (ai-literacy-superpowers/scripts/inv-firewall.sh) enforces this on every shipped template.Runtime scope — Claude Code only. Dynamic workflows are a Claude Code runtime capability and are not transferable to other coding agents. The plugin ships the skill to both the Claude Code and Copilot CLI trees: where the workflow runtime is present, the modes execute; where it is absent (Copilot CLI or any other agent), the skill is guidance only — readable knowledge with each workflow-mode degrading to its static fallback — never omitted and never erroring.
Agents learn across sessions through curated documentation:
Agent completes work
→ integration-agent appends to REFLECTION_LOG.md
→ Human reviews periodically
→ Worthy entries promoted to AGENTS.md
→ All agents read AGENTS.md at next session start
Research shows LLM-generated documentation files reduce success rates. Human-curated files provide modest but real improvement. The rule: agents propose; humans curate.
The plugin implements a three-stage learning cycle:
REFLECTION_LOG.md after each task (date, agent, task, surprise, proposal, improvement)AGENTS.md as GOTCHA or ARCH_DECISION entriesAGENTS.md at session start, incorporating prior learnings into their decision-makingThe GC rule "Stale AGENTS.md" flags reflections older than 30 days that haven't been reviewed for promotion. This prevents the common failure mode where reflections are captured but nobody reads them.
This plugin packages the practical workflow from the AI Literacy for Software Engineers framework. The design draws on several lineages — architecture, theory, craft, and engineering practice — that converge on a single idea: the environment matters as much as the code.
/extract-conventions command.The plugin implements practical workflows, but the framework's design decisions are grounded in cognitive science research on how human and artificial intelligence differ:
The mission: building habitats where human and AI intelligence thrive together.
For a complete worked example of this plugin applied to a real project, see the ai-literacy-exemplar repository — a Go CLI tool built using the full agent pipeline, with authentic git history showing the framework workflow.
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A set of Claude Code and GitHub Copilot plugins providing the AI Literacy framework's complete development workflow — harness engineering, agent orchestration, literate programming, CUPID code review, and the three enforcement loops
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A plugin marketplace for Claude Code and GitHub Copilot CLI shipping opinionated tools for the AI Literacy framework — harness engineering, agent orchestration, decision archaeology, governance, and model evaluation.
Add the marketplace, install the plugin(s) you want, and you have a fully operational habitat for AI-assisted development.
New to the project? Start with ONBOARDING.md or browse the docs site.
| Plugin | Version | What it does | Docs |
|---|---|---|---|
ai-literacy-superpowers | v0.91.0 | The flagship. Harness engineering, agent orchestration, literate programming, CUPID code review, compound learning, and the three enforcement loops. 41 skills, 20 agents, 32 commands. | docs |
model-cards | v0.1.0 | Researches and authors Mitchell-extended model cards from a model name. Tiered source strategy (provider docs → HuggingFace → arXiv → web), refusal-on-unconfirmed-existence honesty rule. | docs |
diagnostic-legibility | v0.11.0 | Hosts agents accountable for maintaining human understanding. Ships the diagnostic-legibility agent — builds and self-challenges two models of a codebase scope (architectural moving parts and domain concepts) via a five-question retained-challenge cycle, then cross-checks the two collections against each other via a five-question per-direction cycle. The /diagnose command surfaces the mutually-corrected models on demand as a readable report. The ConceptualPipelineMap template adds a standalone, presentation-agnostic flow-perspective data model; the agent's scope-resolution mode answers "what does my task touch?"; its pipeline mode traces control flow within that bound and cross-checks all three collections; the /pipeline-map "<task>" command renders the task-scoped map as a self-contained HTML flowchart (pinned, SHA-verified Mermaid inlined; no CDN); and --predict-change adds an opt-in change-site prediction (which stages the task will modify and where it will insert new ones), disclosed as a prediction, never a directive. | docs |
The bulk of this README documents the ai-literacy-superpowers plugin specifically — its skills, agents, commands, hooks, templates, enforcement loops, and pipelines. For model-cards, see its README and its docs. Future sister plugins will land in this marketplace under <plugin-name>/ with their own docs at docs/plugins/<plugin-name>/.
# Claude Code
claude plugin marketplace add Habitat-Thinking/ai-literacy-superpowers
# GitHub Copilot CLI
copilot plugin marketplace add Habitat-Thinking/ai-literacy-superpowers
# Claude Code
claude plugin install ai-literacy-superpowers # the flagship
claude plugin install model-cards # the sister
# GitHub Copilot CLI
copilot plugin install ai-literacy-superpowers@ai-literacy-superpowers
copilot plugin install model-cards@ai-literacy-superpowers
You can install one, the other, or both. Once installed, each plugin's skills, agents, hooks, and commands (or prompts) are available in any session within your project.
Commands are available as
/command-namein Claude Code and as/prompt-namein Copilot CLI.
New template content is found by running /harness-upgrade, which compares
your harness against the plugin's template directly. Nothing nudges you
automatically: the marker that used to drive a session-start nudge tracked the
plugin version rather than template content, so it fired on every release
whether or not the template had changed.
claude plugin list
When a new version is released, update your local installation:
# Claude Code
claude plugin update ai-literacy-superpowers@ai-literacy-superpowers
# Copilot CLI
/plugin update ai-literacy-superpowers
Check the CHANGELOG for what changed between versions.
After updating, run /harness-upgrade to review and adopt any new template
content (constraints, GC rules, optional blocks) into your HARNESS.md.
If you maintain your own marketplace that includes this plugin, refresh the index so new versions are discoverable:
claude plugin marketplace update Habitat-Thinking/ai-literacy-superpowers
This pulls the latest plugin.json metadata (version, description,
keywords) into the marketplace index. Users who have already installed
the plugin still need to run claude plugin update separately.
See How to Update the Plugin for the full guide.
After installation, run these commands to set up your project:
# Full habitat setup (recommended for new projects)
/superpowers-init
# Harness-only setup (if you want constraints without the agent pipeline)
/harness-init
# Check the status of your harness
/harness-status
# Run a health check
/harness-health
# Run an AI literacy assessment
/assess
/superpowers-init sets up the complete habitat: CLAUDE.md, HARNESS.md, AGENTS.md, MODEL_ROUTING.md, REFLECTION_LOG.md, the full agent team, skills, hooks, and CI workflow templates. Use this for new projects.
/harness-init sets up only the harness: HARNESS.md with starter constraints and GC rules. Use this if you want the constraint and enforcement machinery without the full agent pipeline.
Setting a harness up is the easy half. Once it exists, this is how it changes:
/reflect → a human reads the reflections → HARNESS.md → /harness-sync
HARNESS.md is the master and it is human-curated. /reflect captures what was
noticed and routes it by signal type; a human reviews the corpus, with agentic
support, and decides what is worth writing down. /harness-sync then brings the
convention files for Cursor, Copilot and Windsurf into line.
/harness-constrain helps author a constraint. /harness-audit checks whether
what HARNESS.md declares still matches reality. Git history is the record of
what changed and why.
This plugin works with both Claude Code and GitHub Copilot CLI from the same repository. The formats have converged:
| Component | Claude Code | Copilot CLI | Shared? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Skills | skills/*/SKILL.md | skills/*/SKILL.md | Identical |
| Agents | agents/*.agent.md | agents/*.agent.md | Identical |
| Hooks | hooks/hooks.json | hooks/hooks.json | Identical |
| Commands | commands/*.md | .github/prompts/*.prompt.md | Translated |
| Instructions | Via templates/CLAUDE.md | .github/copilot-instructions.md | Adapted |
ai-literacy-superpowers — what it shipsThe remaining sections of this README document the ai-literacy-superpowers plugin in detail. For model-cards, see its README and its docs.
Code quality, harness engineering, and governance knowledge that agents read when working in your codebase.
| Skill | What it provides |
|---|---|
| literate-programming | Knuth's five rules — code as literature, reader-first |
| cupid-code-review | Terhorst-North's five properties — composable, unix, predictable, idiomatic, domain-based |
| github-actions-supply-chain | CI hardening checklist — SHA pinning, permissions, dependabot |
| dependency-vulnerability-audit | Go and Maven CVE scanning procedures |
| docker-scout-audit | Docker image CVE triage and remediation |
| harness-engineering | Foundational concepts — the three components, promotion ladder, enforcement timing |
| context-engineering | Writing conventions precise enough for humans and LLMs to enforce |
| dynamic-workflows | When/which/how to author ephemeral multi-agent workflows — six patterns, election rubric, INV-1/INV-2 governance |
| constraint-design | Designing enforceable constraints with the verification slot model |
| garbage-collection | Entropy-fighting patterns and the auto-fix safety rubric |
| verification-slots | The unified interface for deterministic and agent-based checks |
| ai-literacy-assessment | Assessment instrument — scan repo, ask questions, produce timestamped assessment with prioritised improvement plans |
| harness-observability | Four-layer observability guidance — snapshot format, telemetry export, meta-observability checks |
| convention-extraction | Five extraction questions, artefact mapping, four-element anatomy — surfaces tacit team conventions |
| cross-repo-orchestration | Git-mediated (L4) and specification-mediated (L5) patterns for syncing artefacts and governing portfolios |
| secrets-detection | Gitleaks-based secret scanning — configuration, baselining, and CI integration |
| auto-enforcer-action | Automatic PR constraint checking via GitHub Actions |
| convention-sync | Syncing HARNESS.md conventions to Cursor, Copilot, and Windsurf convention files |
| fitness-functions | Architectural fitness functions as GC rules — periodic checks for layer boundaries, coupling, and complexity |
| model-sovereignty | Decision framework for model selection, hosting, fine-tuning, and vendor independence |
| literacy-improvements | Prioritised improvement plan mapping assessment gaps to plugin commands and skills |
| portfolio-assessment | Multi-repo assessment aggregation — level distribution, shared gaps, and portfolio improvement plans |
| portfolio-dashboard | Generate a self-contained HTML dashboard from portfolio assessment data with trend visualisation |
| team-api | Create or update a Team Topologies Team API document with AI literacy portfolio data |
| cost-tracking | Quarterly AI cost capture — record spend, compare trends, inform model routing |
| cost-estimation | Prospective cost/token/time estimation — range-with-confidence estimate records, snapshot-grounded dollar figures, the prospective sibling of cost-tracking |
| governance-constraint-design | Falsifiable governance constraint authoring — three-frame translation, anti-patterns gallery, governance constraint template |
| governance-audit-practice | Governance audit methodology — five-stage semantic drift model, debt scoring matrix, frame alignment review |
| governance-observability | Governance metrics catalogue, snapshot format extension, and HTML dashboard specification |
| advocatus-diaboli | Adversarial spec review — six-category objection framework, evidence requirements, steel-manned challenge before plan approval |
| choice-cartographer | Decision archaeology — six-lens map of implicit choices a spec has made (forces, alternatives, defaults, patterns, consequences, coherence); routing rule partitions findings between the Cartographer and the diaboli |
| component-design-with-tdad | Design-time methodology for new plugin components — names the five design questions implied by the four-layer TDAD architecture (component type, layer targeting, scenario shape, new-vs-modification, scenario-vs-finding); loadable by spec-writer, tdd-agent, or human brainstorming |
| cognitive-reservoir | Watches the human verifier the harness cannot verify — four observable proxies, observed/inferred/asked confidence discipline, disjunctive thresholds, the decide-your-stop-first principle, and the honesty rule separating contested science (ego depletion, hungry judges) from the robust basis (vigilance decrement, switching cost); advisory-only, never a fatigue score |
| sentinel-design | Defines the sentinel agent category — the three-part signature (S1 read-only, S2 advisory-to-human, S3 explicit honesty rule), the near-miss gallery (why code-reviewer and harness-auditor don't qualify), the honesty-rule-before-detection-logic discipline, and the three anti-patterns (scoring the human, persisting human-state records, gating automatically) |
A coordinated team that handles the full development lifecycle. It splits into two families: sentinels, whose object of care is the human's understanding and judgement, and pipeline & harness agents, whose object of care is an artefact, the pipeline, or the harness.
Sentinel — any agent whose primary purpose is to protect and support the understanding and judgement of the human in the workflow. It informs, challenges, surfaces, or warns — it never fixes, writes, merges, or decides.
Sentinels are the answer to the human side of Margaret-Anne Storey's triple-debt model: where the pipeline and harness agents fight technical debt in the code, sentinels establish and protect the human's understanding, judgement, and discernment — holding back the cognitive and intent debt that accrue when AI produces output faster than a person can absorb it.
Every sentinel satisfies the three-part sentinel signature: S1
read-only trust boundary (no Write/Edit; Bash only for read-only
inspection), S2 advisory output a human disposes (no automated
action), and S3 an explicit epistemic honesty rule (it declares the
status of its claims). S1 is enforced deterministically — the
Sentinel integrity constraint fails CI if a
role: sentinel agent is granted Write/Edit. See the sentinel-design
skill for the near-miss gallery and authoring guidance.
The decision-discipline triad
(carpaccio, advocatus-diaboli, choice-cartographer) guards
decisions; the reservoir-warden guards the decider; the
cost-estimator guards the decision's inputs. The four cadence
sentinels guard the shape of the work around those decisions: the
coda guards the ending, the mast the pact, the wip-warden
the count, and the convener the room.
| Agent | Guards | Role | Trust boundary |
|---|---|---|---|
| carpaccio | Judgement scale | Cadence governor — runs at orchestrator step 0 before spec-writer; slices the raw task description into thin, end-to-end-complete pieces; hard gate on slice dispositions | Read only |
| advocatus-diaboli | Decisions at both gates | Adversarial reviewer — spec-time (premise/design focus, before plan approval) and code-time (risk/implementation focus, before integration); six-category objection record, human-cognition gate on dispositions at both gates | Read only |
| choice-cartographer | Understanding of implicit decisions | Decision-archaeology mapper — runs after spec-mode diaboli dispositions are resolved; emits choice stories (Henney pattern stories) for each material implicit decision; soft gate at plan approval, merge-time HARNESS constraint enforces resolution | Read only |
| reservoir-warden | The decider | Verifier-watch — counts observable proxies (session span, decision volume, context switches, wall-clock hour) over the recent git window, reports each with an observed/inferred/asked flag, and offers the single decide-your-stop-first recommendation when a threshold is crossed; persists no record of the human's state | Read only (no Write/Edit) |
| cost-estimator | The decision's inputs | Prospective-cost emitter — reads MODEL_ROUTING.md and the latest observability/costs/ snapshot, applies the cost-estimation methodology, and returns an estimate-record string (token + time ranges, dollar cost only when grounded) for a dispatcher to persist after a human disposes; refuses rather than fabricating an ungroundable estimate | Read only |
| coda | The ending | Session-close ritual — surfaces what was decided, what is left open, and the next action; parks open threads as append-only records for a later session to resume; returns record content for /coda to persist; never records why someone stopped | Read only |
| mast | The pact | Pact-keeper — recites a limit the person set in clear weather before measuring anything against it, so the recitation cannot be shaped by the moment; refuses to estimate spend it cannot observe; discloses its own check's blind spot; never gates | Read only |
| wip-warden | The count | Concurrency counter — counts live sessions against a limit the person declared, never inventing one; reports the count's honesty flag; watches sessions, never the human; says plainly that strict cannot compel | Read only |
| convener | The room | Counsel-bringer — runs at plan approval beside the cartographer; maps the roles and groups a spec affects and drafts the one concrete question worth asking each; soft gate at plan approval, complete-if-present merge constraint; never contacts anyone, in any medium, ever | Read only |
| Agent | Role | Trust boundary |
|---|---|---|
| orchestrator | Pipeline coordinator — dispatches agents in sequence | Full access |
| spec-writer | Updates specs and plans before any code is written | No Bash |
| tdd-agent | Writes failing tests from spec scenarios | Can execute tests |
| code-reviewer | Reviews code through CUPID and literate programming lenses | No Write |
| integration-agent | CHANGELOG, commit, PR, CI, merge, cleanup, reflection | Full git access |
| harness-discoverer | Read-only project scanner | Read only |
| harness-enforcer | Unified verification engine for all constraint types | Read + Bash |
| harness-gc | Periodic entropy fighter | Read + Write |
| harness-auditor | Meta-agent — checks whether the harness matches reality | Write to Status only |
| assessor | AI literacy assessment — scans repo, asks questions, applies fixes, recommends workflow changes | Read + Write |
| governance-auditor | Governance specialist — semantic drift analysis, debt inventory, three-frame alignment | Read + limited Write |
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
/superpowers-init | Guided setup — scaffolds the full habitat |
/superpowers-status | Health dashboard — harness, agents, learning, CI |
/harness-init | Harness-specific init |
/harness-status | Quick harness health read |
/harness-constrain | Add or promote a constraint |
/harness-gc | Manage and run garbage collection rules |
/harness-audit | Read-only diagnostic. Same engine as /harness-sync but prints findings without prompting to fix. Use for inspection-without-commitment, CI scripts, or the quarterly cadence anchor. |
/reflect | Capture a post-task reflection |
/worktree | Git worktree lifecycle — spin, merge, clean |
/assess | AI literacy assessment with immediate fixes, workflow recommendations, and prioritised improvement plans |
/harness-health | Harness health snapshot — enforcement ratio, trends, meta-observability checks |
/extract-conventions | Guided session — surfaces tacit team conventions and maps them to CLAUDE.md and HARNESS.md |
/harness-sync | Everyday lifecycle entry. Runs the shared audit-engine to detect drift across every surface (convention files, snapshot, Status section accuracy, ONBOARDING.md staleness, template, constraint regressions, recurring reflection patterns), presents a unified drift table tagged [auto]/[manual], and applies the fixes you select. Mechanical fixes (convention files, snapshot, Status) auto-apply via existing primitives; judgement-required fixes (ONBOARDING regen, template upgrade, constraint authoring) print suggested commands. |
/convention-sync | Sync HARNESS.md conventions to Cursor, Copilot, and Windsurf convention files |
/portfolio-assess | Multi-repo AI literacy assessment — aggregate across local repos, GitHub orgs, or topic tags |
/cost-capture | Capture AI tool cost data — record spend, compare to previous snapshot, update model routing |
/cost-estimate | Estimate a target's tokens, agent-compute time, and (when grounded) cost before it runs — dispatches the read-only cost-estimator agent, validates the record, and writes it to cost-estimates/ after you dispose (the prospective sibling of /cost-capture) |
/governance-constrain | Guided governance constraint authoring with three-frame alignment check |
/governance-audit | Deep governance investigation — semantic drift, debt inventory, frame alignment |
/governance-health | Governance health pulse check and dashboard generation |
/harness-upgrade | Discover and adopt new template content after a plugin upgrade |
/harness-onboarding | Generate a human-readable onboarding guide from harness state |
/observatory-verify | Verify all Observatory signal contracts against latest output files |
/carpaccio | Slice a task description into thin, end-to-end-complete pieces before spec-writer (cadence governor; runs at orchestrator step 0) |
/diaboli | Run the adversarial spec reviewer — produces objection record at docs/superpowers/objections/<slug>.md |
/choice-cartograph | Run the Choice Cartographer — produces choice-story record at docs/superpowers/stories/<slug>.md after spec-mode diaboli dispositions are resolved |
/harness-affordance | Manage the project's affordance inventory — discover scans config to produce a draft inventory; add and review planned |
/reservoir | Read-only advisory on you, the verifier — Read mode dispatches the reservoir-warden agent for a fuller cognitive-reservoir read; Tune mode helps you edit the HARNESS.md Cognitive reservoir block (thresholds, chronotype). Advisory-only, not a Constraint |
Opinionated defaults scaffolded by /superpowers-init:
MODEL_ROUTING.md guides cost-conscious model selection. It maps each agent to a model tier (most capable, standard, fast) based on the judgment required. The orchestrator consults it when dispatching agents — spec-writers and code-reviewers get the most capable model; implementers and integration agents get standard models. Token budget guidance prevents runaway costs.
All hooks are registered in hooks/hooks.json and active in every Claude Code session.
.md files being written or edited (deterministic, advisory)/harness-audit/harness-health/reflect to capture learningsframework.md modifications, nudges /reflect + /sync-repos + downstream README checksREFLECTION_LOG.md and nudges curation into AGENTS.md/governance-auditSee the Installation section above for the full marketplace + plugin install. In short:
claude plugin marketplace add Habitat-Thinking/ai-literacy-superpowers
claude plugin install ai-literacy-superpowers
cd your-project
Then in Claude Code:
/superpowers-init
The init command will:
/superpowers-status
Shows harness enforcement ratio, agent team configuration, compound learning state, model routing, and CI summary.
The plugin provides the agent pipeline pattern but does not ship language-specific implementers — these are created per project for each language in the stack. To create one:
go-implementer.md).claude/agents/<language>-implementer.md in your projectskills/<skill-name>/SKILL.md with YAML frontmatter (name, description with trigger conditions)references/ subdirectory for supporting materialcommands/<command-name>.md with YAML frontmatter (name, description)/<command-name> in Claude Code sessionshooks/scripts/<script-name>.shhooks/hooks.json under the appropriate event (PreToolUse, PostToolUse, or Stop)CLAUDE_PROJECT_DIR, etc.)Every mechanism in the plugin operates at one of three timescales:
| Loop | Trigger | Strictness | Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|
| Advisory | PreToolUse hook | Warn | Catch issues while context is fresh |
| Strict | CI on PR | Fail | Prevent violations from reaching main |
| Investigative | Scheduled GC + audit | Report | Fight slow entropy that gates miss |
ADVISORY LOOP (edit time — warn, do not block)
│
├── Hooks
│ ├── PostToolUse constraint gate Reads HARNESS.md commit-scoped constraints,
│ │ warns on violations during Write/Edit
│ ├── PreToolUse markdownlint check Runs markdownlint on .md files being
│ │ written or edited (deterministic)
│ ├── Stop drift check Detects CI/linter/dependency changes at
│ │ session end, nudges /harness-audit
│ ├── Stop snapshot staleness check Detects stale harness snapshot (> 30 days),
│ │ nudges /harness-health
│ ├── Stop reflection prompt Detects commits during session,
│ │ nudges /reflect to capture learnings
│ ├── Stop framework-change prompt Detects framework.md modifications,
│ │ nudges /reflect + /sync-repos +
│ │ downstream README checks
│ ├── Stop secrets check Scans for committed secrets using gitleaks
│ ├── Stop rotating GC check Runs one deterministic GC rule per session,
│ │ rotating by day-of-year
│ ├── Stop curation nudge Detects unpromoted reflections, nudges
│ │ curation into AGENTS.md
│ └── Stop governance drift check Detects governance file changes, nudges
│ /governance-audit
├── Context (read by agents at session start)
│ ├── CLAUDE.md Workflow rules, conventions, disciplines
│ ├── AGENTS.md Compound learning memory (human-curated)
│ ├── MODEL_ROUTING.md Model-tier guidance + token budgets
│ └── Skills (36) Domain knowledge for agents
│
└── Commands
├── /reflect Capture post-task learnings
└── /worktree spin|merge|clean Parallel agent isolation
STRICT LOOP (merge time — block until green)
│
├── CI Workflows (generated from templates)
│ ├── ci-github-actions.yml PR-scoped constraint enforcement
│ │ (markdownlint, gitleaks, shell checks)
│ ├── gc.yml Weekly GC for deterministic rules
│ ├── docs-build-check.yml mkdocs --strict at PR time
│ ├── spec-redaction-marker-check.yml Blocks HTML-comment redaction in specs
│ ├── tdad-tests-fast.yml TDAD Layers 0+1 fast-suite at PR time
│ ├── tdad-scenario-check.yml New plugin components must ship a scenario
│ └── ci-mutation-testing.yml Language-specific mutation testing
│
├── Agent Pipeline
│ ├── orchestrator Coordinates full pipeline
│ │ ├── GATE: objection adjudication User resolves objections before proceeding
│ │ ├── GATE: plan approval User reviews spec + adjudicated objections
│ │ └── GUARDRAIL: MAX_REVIEW_CYCLES=3
│ ├── spec-writer Spec + plan updates (no Bash)
│ ├── advocatus-diaboli Adversarial spec review (read-only)
│ ├── tdd-agent Failing tests from spec scenarios
│ ├── implementer(s) Makes tests green — user-created per
│ │ language, not shipped by the plugin
│ ├── code-reviewer CUPID + LP review (no Write)
│ └── integration-agent CHANGELOG, PR, CI, merge, reflection
│
└── Harness Constraints (HARNESS.md)
├── Deterministic Backed by CI tools
├── Agent-backed Backed by harness-enforcer
└── Unverified Declared intent, not yet automated
INVESTIGATIVE LOOP (scheduled — sweep for entropy)
│
├── Garbage Collection Rules (HARNESS.md)
│ ├── Weekly CI workflow (gc.yml) Deterministic rules: secret scanner,
│ │ snapshot staleness, shell checks
│ ├── Rotating Stop hook One deterministic GC rule per session
│ └── Agent-scoped rules Documentation freshness, command-prompt
│ sync, plugin manifest currency
├── Compound Learning
│ ├── REFLECTION_LOG.md Agent reflections (append-only)
│ └── AGENTS.md Human-curated from reflections
│
├── Harness Commands
│ ├── /harness-audit Full meta-verification
│ ├── /harness-health Snapshot with trends and meta-observability checks
│ ├── /harness-status Quick health read
│ └── /harness-gc Run GC checks on demand
│
└── Governance Commands
├── /governance-constrain Guided governance constraint authoring
├── /governance-audit Deep governance investigation
└── /governance-health Governance pulse check and dashboard
The three enforcement loops generate signals that, when collected, make the entire habitat observable. The plugin's mechanisms produce the data; observability tools (OpenTelemetry, Claude Code analytics, Grafana) make it visible.
| Panel | What it shows | Sources |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | Spend trend, model-tier distribution, cost per PR | Provider API, MODEL_ROUTING.md compliance |
| Quality | Coverage trend, mutation score trend, change failure rate | CI artifacts, mutation testing workflow |
| Adoption | Active AI users, sessions per developer, acceptance rate | Provider analytics |
| Habitat health | Harness enforcement ratio, compound learning growth, ALCI progression | /harness-status, REFLECTION_LOG.md, ALCI surveys |
Without observability, cost discipline is aspirational, mutation testing is a one-time experiment, and the harness is a document that may or may not match reality. With it, every mechanism gains an evidence layer.
The plugin includes a four-layer observability model for monitoring harness health over time:
| Layer | Question | How |
|---|---|---|
| Operational cadence | Is the harness running? | /harness-health generates snapshots; a Stop hook nudges when the last snapshot is older than 30 days |
| Trend visibility | How has the harness changed? | Snapshots are diffed to show deltas; --trends produces multi-period views |
| Telemetry export | Can I visualise this externally? | Snapshot data can be exported as OpenTelemetry metrics to any OTLP-compatible backend |
| Meta-observability | Is the observability itself working? | Five self-checks: snapshot currency, cadence compliance, learning flow, GC effectiveness, trend direction |
/harness-health generates structured markdown snapshots stored in observability/snapshots/. Each snapshot captures:
Trends are derived by diffing consecutive snapshots — no external tooling required.
/harness-health maintains a shields.io badge in the project README:
For teams that want external dashboards, the references/telemetry-export.md reference documents OTel metric names and a reference export script. The file-based approach (snapshots in git) is the default — telemetry export is optional.
skills/harness-observability/SKILL.mdcommands/harness-health.mdskills/harness-observability/references/meta-observability-checks.mdskills/harness-observability/references/snapshot-format.mdskills/harness-observability/references/telemetry-export.mdhooks/hooks.jsonscripts/update-health-badge.shWhen you use the orchestrator agent, it runs this pipeline:
orchestrator
→ spec-writer
→ advocatus-diaboli (spec mode — read-only, produces spec objection record)
→ GATE: objection adjudication — spec mode (user writes dispositions; gate blocked while any is `pending`)
→ GATE: plan approval (user reviews plan + adjudicated spec objection record)
→ tdd-agent
→ implementer(s) (parallel, one per language — user-created per project)
→ code-reviewer
→ GUARDRAIL: MAX_REVIEW_CYCLES=3 (escalate after 3 loops)
→ advocatus-diaboli (code mode — read-only, produces code objection record; runs once after loop exits)
→ GATE: integration approval — code mode (user writes dispositions; gate blocked while any is `pending`)
→ integration-agent (includes reflection step)
The spec objection adjudication gate raises premise-level challenges before any tests or code exist — the cheapest moment to change course. The plan approval gate catches bad plans before they become bad code. The loop guardrail prevents unbounded reviewer cycles. The code objection adjudication gate surfaces threat-model, failure-mode, and operational concerns visible in the implementation before merge.
The plugin ships the orchestrator, spec-writer, tdd-agent, code-reviewer, and integration-agent. Language-specific implementers are not included — each project creates its own based on the stack. See How to Extend for instructions.
Beneath the static agent pipeline sits an ephemeral execution substrate: dynamic workflows — self-authored, single-task multi-agent harnesses an agent writes, runs once, and discards. Each subagent gets a clean context window and its own model tier, which is what defeats the three failure modes a single long context is prone to: agentic laziness (declaring a multi-part job done after partial progress), self-preferential bias (an agent judging its own output), and goal drift. The conceptual model lives in the dynamic-workflows skill and the how-to guide.
Six composable patterns — classify-and-act, fan-out-and-synthesize, adversarial verification, generate-and-filter, tournament, and loop-until-done — are the building blocks. The plugin dogfoods them: the harness-enforcer fans out one verifier per constraint; code-reviewer reviews in a separate context; assessor/harness-auditor run deep-research scans; /reflect --mine mines the reflection log; and the orchestrator can route a task to a tournament, root-cause, or triage workflow.
Elect deliberately. Workflows cost more tokens and suit long-running, massively parallel, highly structured, or adversarial tasks — so they are opt-in, never reflexive. The four-question when-not-to-use rubric keeps the static pipeline the default; reaching for a workflow on a routine task is treated as over-orchestration.
Two governing invariants protect the curated harness from ephemeral churn:
HARNESS.md, AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md, MODEL_ROUTING.md) directly; discoveries flow through REFLECTION_LOG.md → human curates → AGENTS.md. A deterministic CI firewall (ai-literacy-superpowers/scripts/inv-firewall.sh) enforces this on every shipped template.Runtime scope — Claude Code only. Dynamic workflows are a Claude Code runtime capability and are not transferable to other coding agents. The plugin ships the skill to both the Claude Code and Copilot CLI trees: where the workflow runtime is present, the modes execute; where it is absent (Copilot CLI or any other agent), the skill is guidance only — readable knowledge with each workflow-mode degrading to its static fallback — never omitted and never erroring.
Agents learn across sessions through curated documentation:
Agent completes work
→ integration-agent appends to REFLECTION_LOG.md
→ Human reviews periodically
→ Worthy entries promoted to AGENTS.md
→ All agents read AGENTS.md at next session start
Research shows LLM-generated documentation files reduce success rates. Human-curated files provide modest but real improvement. The rule: agents propose; humans curate.
The plugin implements a three-stage learning cycle:
REFLECTION_LOG.md after each task (date, agent, task, surprise, proposal, improvement)AGENTS.md as GOTCHA or ARCH_DECISION entriesAGENTS.md at session start, incorporating prior learnings into their decision-makingThe GC rule "Stale AGENTS.md" flags reflections older than 30 days that haven't been reviewed for promotion. This prevents the common failure mode where reflections are captured but nobody reads them.
This plugin packages the practical workflow from the AI Literacy for Software Engineers framework. The design draws on several lineages — architecture, theory, craft, and engineering practice — that converge on a single idea: the environment matters as much as the code.
/extract-conventions command.The plugin implements practical workflows, but the framework's design decisions are grounded in cognitive science research on how human and artificial intelligence differ:
The mission: building habitats where human and AI intelligence thrive together.
For a complete worked example of this plugin applied to a real project, see the ai-literacy-exemplar repository — a Go CLI tool built using the full agent pipeline, with authentic git history showing the framework workflow.
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