From idea to production, with receipts.

The ten-minute tour. Every output below is the real CLI; nothing is mocked.

step 01Install into the repo you are already in

cd /path/to/your/repo
npx arsdlc init                          # skills + instructions + commands, detected for your harness
# skills only, through the open skills CLI:
npx skills add AnshRoshan/arsdlc

This writes the skills into your harness's skill directories, a docs/ process tree and an arsdlc.json marker. Claude Code can take the plugin instead: /plugin marketplace add AnshRoshan/arsdlc, then /plugin install arsdlc@arsdlc, which also brings the guard mod and the /arsdlc-next, /arsdlc-status and /arsdlc-report commands. Every arsdlc command below is that same binary, whichever way you got it.

step 02Open a feature with a lane

arsdlc new "Payment retries" --kind backend --lane standard

Pick a lane: spike (a question), quick (bounded change), standard (new capability), regulated (money, PII, auth). The lane decides which gates apply, and it only moves up. arsdlc kinds prints what each kind has to verify.

step 03Talk to your agent

use arsdlc-brainstorm, I want to build payment retries

The brainstorm skill classifies the work, interviews you with a recommended answer beside every question, and routes to arsdlc-discover then arsdlc-spec. The spec is EARS format and you sign §5. Nobody signs it for you.

step 04Let the gates referee

arsdlc next payment-retries --json
state: BUILD · owner: human · blocking: G1 approval (0/1 on current plan hash)

Every stage ends with this. It reads the files, derives the state, names the blocking items and the one skill to load. The agent obeys the disk, not the chat, so a fresh session costs nothing to orient.

step 05Approve as a human

arsdlc approve G1 payment-retries --by "Ansh"
✗ segregation of duties: "Ansh" is the author of payment-retries

Approvals are bound to the hash of the artifact. Edit the plan afterwards and the approval goes stale and the state moves backwards. Agents cannot approve at all, and the author cannot approve their own work.

step 06Verify, do not trust

arsdlc evidence payment-retries --label full -- npm test
… 41 passed (41), exit 0, 8.2s
evidence/2026-10-04T09-12-03-full.json recorded

arsdlc evidence runs the command itself and records the exit code and output hash. A test run the agent watched instead of recorded is not evidence, which is exactly what the guard mod holds in Claude Code.

step 07Get a second model over the diff

arsdlc gate G4 payment-retries
✗ review ran on a different model than wrote the code  both on opus

G4 reads Author model and Reviewer model out of acceptance.md and fails a same-family pair. If only one family is configured, the honest line is Cross-model: degraded (why), and the gate prints that it is not the guarantee.

referenceThe command set

arsdlc init	install skills, instructions, slash commands and read-only subagents, detected for your harness
arsdlc doctor	what is installed where, which companions, which test gate
arsdlc skills / kinds	list the bundled skills; print each kind's verify model and each lane's gates
arsdlc new	open a feature with a kind and a lane
arsdlc next / status	derive state from disk: blockers, next task, the skill to load; or every feature at once
arsdlc check	validate a spec (EARS) or a delta file
arsdlc trace	requirement to task matrix
arsdlc gate / gates	run one of G1-G6, or all six
arsdlc scan	secrets over tracked files
arsdlc report	what the evidence and approval logs say: runs, pass rate, staleness, where the feature waited
arsdlc evidence	run a command and record the run as evidence
arsdlc approve	human gate approval (G1, G4, G5); refuses agents and refuses the author
arsdlc lane	show or raise a feature's lane; lowering needs --force with a note
arsdlc audit	approval chain integrity plus the evidence log

Next: all 20 skills, or read the README. Every claim on this page is checked in CI against the CLI's own command table, so a command that stops existing fails the build.