Harness Contract Change

Trigger

• Change AGENTS.md, tools/agent/docs/*, tools/agent/*, tools/make/agent.mk, or harness-facing CI/workflow classification
• Change contributor-facing wrappers that explain the harness, such as README.md, CONTRIBUTING.md, or the PR template

Required Surfaces

• harness_docs

Conditional Surfaces

• harness_exec
• contributor_interface
• ci_e2e

Stop Conditions

• The edit would create a second conflicting source of truth instead of updating the canonical one
• The rule change cannot be enforced or validated in the same change

Workflow

1. Read agent README, governance docs, and execution-plan guidance for current contract state
2. Modify agent contract docs, manifests, validation scripts, or contributor wrappers
3. Use make agent-validate as the focused iteration check for docs and manifests
4. Run make agent-ci-gate CHANGED_FILES="..." as the final gate; it includes the rule-selected harness validation once
5. Record any durable code/spec divergence as indexed debt entries

Gotchas

• Do not add a prose-only harness rule when the same invariant can be enforced in manifests, scripts, or CI.
• When routing, validation, or contributor workflow changes, update the executable layer and the human-readable layer in the same patch.

Must Read

• tools/agent/docs/README.md
• tools/agent/docs/governance.md
• tools/agent/docs/plans/README.md

Standard Commands

• make agent-validate
• make agent-scorecard
• make agent-report ENV=cpu CHANGED_FILES="..."
• make agent-ci-gate CHANGED_FILES="..."

Acceptance

• Harness docs, manifests, scripts, and contributor wrappers remain aligned
• The change improves discoverability, source-of-truth clarity, or mechanical enforcement of the harness
• Any durable code/spec divergence discovered during the harness change is recorded in the matching indexed debt entry instead of being left only in PR text