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Exosuit

RFCs

RFCs are durable design decisions: the laws of the system, recorded as prose rather than ephemeral task notes. They live on disk as documents because their value is the prose argument rather than a set of structured fields (RFC 10180). Exosuit indexes RFC metadata in its state store, but the files themselves remain human-authored, human-read documents.

The staged process

Section titled “The staged process”

An RFC advances through five stages (RFC 0108). The structure replaces unilateral agent decisions with a collaboration between two roles:

  • The Committee (user) is the arbiter of consensus. Only the user can approve the transitions that gate design and implementation.
  • The Champion (agent) does the legwork of drafting, specifying, implementing, and verifying, but needs the Committee’s approval to unlock the next stage.
StageNameMeansExit criteria
0Strawman”I have an idea.”The user agrees the problem is worth solving.
1Proposal”We agree this is worth doing.”The user agrees with the shape of the solution.
2Draft”Here is exactly how it works.”The spec is complete and the plan is sound. No new design after this point.
3Candidate”It is built.”The feature is verified to work as designed.
4Stable”It is the law.”The RFC is history; the spec is the record of reality.

Stage 0 RFCs are identified by a filename handle and carry no global number. At the 0 → 1 transition the RFC is assigned the next global ID and moves to docs/rfcs/stage-1/.

Transitions are steering events

Section titled “Transitions are steering events”

Each promotion is a deliberate checkpoint where the user provides steering:

  • 0 → 1 — Vision steering: Is this the right problem?
  • 1 → 2 — Architectural steering: Is this the right solution structure?
  • 2 → 3 — Implementation steering: Code review, edge cases.
  • 3 → 4 — Governance steering: Is this ready to be law?

The agent never promotes 0 → 1 or 1 → 2 without explicit approval.

The lightweight path

Section titled “The lightweight path”

Not every decision is architectural. Naming conventions, small features, and configuration choices benefit from being recorded but do not need a full spec at each stage. A lightweight RFC (marked lightweight: true) still passes through all five stages, but with minimal artifacts and combinable transitions. For example, “is this worth doing?” and “is the shape right?” can be reviewed together (RFC 00226).