Artifacts

Decapod governs authored state and produces generated evidence and projections. Those classes are not interchangeable.

These artifacts are the inspectable surface of .decapod/ as the repo-native substrate for governed agent work. They preserve the state that should survive beyond a chat transcript: intent, architecture assumptions, selected context, validation output, and proof provenance.

Authored and managed state

The files under .decapod/managed/ include agent-authored project contracts and Decapod-managed state. They are not all generated.

specs/

Living documentation of the project's intent and design. The acting agent authors and maintains this prose; Decapod requires and validates it.

• INTENT.md: What the project is trying to achieve.
• ARCHITECTURE.md: High-level design and diagrams.
• INTERFACES.md: Defined APIs and boundaries.

Generated evidence and projections

Decapod generates supported context capsules, attestations, manifests, receipts, and proof artifacts from governed inputs. A generated projection is a consumable view, not an independent authority that can replace its source.

Evidence and provenance records

• provenance/: Manifests and checklists for promotion.
• custody/: Detailed evidence logs and contradiction records.
• diagnostics/: Optional logs for troubleshooting.

Context capsules

Deterministic, generated projections used by agents to orient themselves. Their provenance identifies the authority from which they were resolved.

AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md, etc.

Root-level entrypoints for AI agents. These files point agents to the Decapod kernel and provide their starting instructions.

See Governance Artifact Inventory for state ownership and lifecycle details.