Status Document

Tier: 0 · Normative weight: ergonomics Requires: nothing

Problem it removes

“Where are we?” gets answered from memory, chat scrollback, or a stale plan. Each answer differs, and work resumes against a reconstructed state instead of a recorded one.

Mechanism

One STATUS.md at the repository root with a scope contract in its header: present tense is what is true today; the per-change narrative is Git history, not this file; displaced history moves out. Sections are bounded on purpose — Current phase (one bolded sentence plus exact state), Active (maximum 8), Blocked (maximum 5), a named promotion gate defined as a conjunction of observable clauses, Known current unknowns, and Out of scope. The item caps force triage: a status document that can grow without limit stops being read.

The unknowns section is the quiet workhorse — a standing list of what is deliberately not known, so silence is never mistaken for coverage.

Cost

Authoring: under an hour. Per change: a few lines at each real state change; the “Last updated” date is the honesty check. Per session: it is the first read, and replaces a longer reconstruction.

Do not adopt when

The repository’s state is fully derivable from its code and CI — a status document there duplicates what Git already answers.

Evidence

Assessed in cloud-ops, whose status document carries the “definition of aligned” gate. Observed in flow, scope, kinra-os, and kinra-site.

Template

templates/status-document/STATUS.md

Related patterns

The Front Door points here first. Decision Records hold the reasons that this file deliberately does not accumulate.