Ten commands that turn the lifecycle into callable surface area in Claude Code.
The markdown is source-of-truth; commands give you explicit handles.
Enter one of the three lifecycle modes
Enter Context mode — read, verify, ask. No code changes allowed. Produces CTX plan, System Spec, Architecture, ADRs.
Enter Exploration mode — plan, design, prototype. Requires G1. No production code. Creates EXP plan/spec, ADRs, prototypes.
Enter Production mode — implement the approved plan. Requires G2. No new plans, no scope changes.
Validate gates and record human decisions
Validate a quality gate. Delegates to the matching gatekeeper subagent. Returns pass / conditional-pass / block. Read-only.
Record a human approval/acceptance for an artifact (ADR/CTX/EXP/PRD). Sets decided-by/approved-by/approved-at in the provenance frontmatter.
Override a Gatekeeper "block" verdict. Documents the override in plan frontmatter and governance log. Reason mandatory. Override does NOT approve — run /approve separately.
Create a new Architecture Decision Record from the template. Determines next ADR number, fills Context/Decision/Consequences. Status: Proposed until human approves.
Triage out-of-scope items captured as PROP-NNN
Promote a Plan Proposal to a real CTX/EXP/PRD plan in its suggested chapter. Pre-fills Goal and Kill Criteria from the proposal. Moves the proposal to promoted/.
Reject a Plan Proposal with an explicit reason. Reason mandatory — rejected proposals stay queryable. Moves to proposals/rejected/.
Run a content-level governance audit on the whole repo — ADR drift, undocumented patterns, obsolete ADRs. Delegates to the governance-auditor subagent. Read-only with respect to code.
Quick reference
| Command | Purpose |
|---|---|
| /context | Enter Context mode |
| /explore | Enter Exploration mode (requires G1) |
| /produce | Enter Production mode (requires G2) |
| /gate-check G1|G2|G3 | Validate a quality gate via the matching gatekeeper |
| /new-adr <title> | Create new Architecture Decision Record |
| /approve <id> [note] | Record human approval in the provenance frontmatter |
| /promote <PROP-id> | Promote a Plan Proposal to a real plan |
| /reject <PROP-id> <reason> | Reject a Plan Proposal with reason |
| /gate-override <plan> <reason> | Override a Gatekeeper block verdict |
| /governance-audit [note] | Run content-level governance audit |