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data/doc/POLICY.md

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+# Implementation Policies
+
+This document decides how this repository is implemented: the coding rules, the
+responsibilities of the parts and the direction of dependency between them, the
+handling of settings and credentials, the approach to tests and documentation,
+the versioning scheme, and the criteria a change is judged by.
+
+It stands on its own. No rule here is completed by a document kept in another
+repository, and a subject it does not cover is a gap in this document, to be
+filled here rather than looked up elsewhere.
+
+What the system is for belongs to [`REQUIREMENTS.md`](REQUIREMENTS.md); how it
+is composed belongs to [`BASIC_DESIGN.md`](BASIC_DESIGN.md); the Recipe format
+and the plugin contract belong to [`PLUGINS.md`](PLUGINS.md). This document does
+not restate them; it decides how they are carried out.
+
+The Invariants below decide over the rest of it.
+
+---
+
+## 1. General Policy
+
+### 1.1 Purpose and scope
+
+- **Automatic Ruby is a framework, and the framework is the small part.** It
+  loads a Recipe, finds classes by name and calls them in order. Nearly every
+  change belongs in a plugin, and a change that adds domain knowledge to the
+  framework needs a reason beyond convenience.
+- **It is one person's tooling, run unattended from `cron`.** It is not a
+  service, not multi-tenant and not a product. That premise decides several
+  rules below that would otherwise look lax — the Recipe being trusted, chiefly.
+- This document applies to everything committed here: the library, the plugins,
+  the executable, the tests, the packaging and the documents.
+- Ruby is the implementation language and stays the implementation language. A
+  proposal to reimplement the core in another language is out of scope, and so
+  is turning this into a Rails application.
+
+### 1.2 Invariants
+
+These come before every other rule here. Some of what they forbid is what a
+general policy would otherwise ask for.
+
+1. **The Recipe format and the plugin contract are interfaces, and this
+   repository is not free to change them.** Both are depended on by files this
+   repository cannot see: Recipes in `~/.automatic/config`, plugins in
+   `~/.automatic/plugins`. A change that breaks either is deliberate, is
+   justified, and is recorded in [`VERSIONS`](VERSIONS).
+2. **The pipeline value has one shape.** Every plugin takes and returns an array
+   of feed objects. Introducing a second representation would end composability,
+   which is the whole of what the framework provides.
+3. **The plugin architecture is not replaced.** Recipes are not superseded by
+   hard-coded procedures, the loader is not replaced by a registry that must be
+   edited to add a plugin, and the framework does not become a single
+   application with the plugins folded into it.
+4. **A dependency needed by one plugin is not a dependency of the framework.**
+   Installing the gem must not pull in an SDK for a service the operator does
+   not use. See section 9.
+5. **A failure is never silent.** No `rescue` that returns an empty pipeline as
+   if nothing happened, and no run that exits zero after something went wrong.
+6. **The default test suite reaches no network and needs no credential.** None
+   is configured in CI.
+7. **A plugin that cannot work is never simulated into working.** Stubbing a
+   dead service to make a test pass, or to make the catalogue look better, is
+   forbidden outright. Removing the plugin is the correct outcome. See
+   section 4.
+8. **No credential is committed**, in a Recipe, an example, a fixture or a test,
+   and none is written to the log.
+9. **Historical release history is not rewritten.** Past versions and their
+   dates in [`VERSIONS`](VERSIONS) are a record, not a thing to tidy.
+10. **The licence is GPL version 3 or LGPL version 3.** Automatic Ruby is
+    dual-licensed, and a user may choose either license at their discretion. New
+    files use the same dual license.
+
+### 1.3 Design philosophy
+
+- Simple comes before clever. Common work should fit in a short Recipe, and a
+  new abstraction needs a concrete problem the existing plugin contract cannot
+  solve.
+- Documentation examples must run, and the Quick Start uses Supported plugins
+  only. Supported paths receive maintenance priority over integrations that
+  need rework.
+
+- Prefer the smallest change that solves the problem. A pipeline that has run in
+  someone's `cron` for a decade has earned the benefit of the doubt.
+- Understand why something exists before replacing it. A constant that looks
+  arbitrary usually encodes an operational fact.
+- A capability that can live in a plugin lives in a plugin.
+- Where a decision looks odd, a comment gives the reason, so that a later change
+  does not quietly undo it.
+- Old is not a defect. Neither is unfashionable. A defect is something that does
+  not work, is not understood, or cannot be tested.
+
+### 1.4 The parts and the direction of dependency
+
+```text
+bin/automatic
+      |
+      v
+lib/automatic/cli.rb
+      |
+      v
+lib/automatic.rb  ->  recipe.rb  ->  pipeline.rb
+      |                                  |
+      |                                  v
+      |                        Automatic::Plugin::*
+      v                                  |
+log.rb  feed_maker.rb  feed_parser.rb  http.rb
+      ^----------------------------------+
+```
+
+Dependency points one way and there is no edge back up:
+
+- **`bin/automatic` knows only the CLI.** It puts `lib` on the load path,
+  requires `automatic/cli`, and exits with the status it is given. No option, no
+  subcommand and no policy lives there.
+- **The CLI knows the framework; the framework does not know the CLI.** Nothing
+  under `lib/automatic/` other than `cli.rb` may reference it.
+- **`Pipeline` knows how to find and call a plugin; it knows no plugin.** A
+  reference to a plugin class name in the framework is a design error.
+- **A plugin knows `Log`, `FeedMaker`, `FeedParser`, `Http` and its own
+  libraries.** It does not know another plugin, does not know the CLI, and does
+  not reach into `Automatic` for directories other than through the helpers
+  provided.
+- **`Log`, `FeedMaker`, `FeedParser` and `Http` are leaves.** They depend on
+  nothing else in this repository.
+- A new responsibility goes to the part that owns it. Where it appears to belong
+  to two, the boundary is wrong and is corrected, rather than the code being
+  written across it.
+
+### 1.5 The plugin boundary
+
+- The framework's knowledge of a plugin is: its name, its file's location, its
+  constructor's two arguments and its `run` method. It does not know a plugin's
+  category semantics, its settings, its dependencies or its failure modes.
+- The framework does not validate a plugin's `config`. It cannot know what is
+  valid, and pretending otherwise would put plugin knowledge in the framework.
+- The framework does not inspect the pipeline between plugins.
+- A plugin does not modify framework state. It does not set `Automatic.root_dir`
+  or `Automatic.user_dir`, and it does not change the log level.
+- Plugin-to-plugin dependency is avoided. A plugin that wants another plugin's
+  result is a Recipe with two entries in it.
+- Shared plugin code that the framework does not use stays under `plugins/`, not
+  in `lib/`. `plugins/store/database.rb` is where it is for that reason.
+
+### 1.6 Configuration
+
+- A Recipe is the whole of a job's configuration. There is no second file, no
+  configuration directory, and no environment-variable settings.
+- The one exception is `AUTOMATIC_RUBY_ENV=test`, which permits the user
+  directory to be overridden. It exists for the tests and is not an operator
+  interface.
+- The framework reads exactly one `global` key, `global.log.level`. Adding a
+  second is a change to the Recipe format and is judged as one.
+- `global.timezone` and `global.cache` are inert and stay inert. They are not
+  removed — that would edit operators' files for no gain — and they are not
+  given a meaning.
+- A plugin reads its settings from `@config` by string key, tolerates `nil` for
+  the mapping and for any key, and follows the established names: `retry`,
+  `interval`, `db`, `path`.
+- Not every constant becomes a setting. A value the operator would plausibly
+  change is a setting; a value that is part of what the plugin means stays in
+  the code.
+
+### 1.7 Error handling
+
+- **The framework catches nothing from a plugin.** A plugin that raises ends the
+  run, for the reason given in `REQUIREMENTS.md` section 12. Adding a blanket
+  rescue around plugin execution would change what every existing Recipe means
+  and is not done.
+- **A plugin owns its transient failures**, through `retry` and `interval`, and
+  logs each failed attempt.
+- The framework's own failures have named classes in `lib/automatic.rb`:
+  `Automatic::Error` and, under it, `NoRecipeError`, `NoPluginError` and
+  `InvalidRecipeError`. A new framework failure gets a class rather than a
+  `RuntimeError` with a message.
+- **`rescue` without a class is `rescue StandardError` and that is what is
+  meant.** A bare `rescue` is acceptable in a plugin's retry block, where the
+  point is that any failure of the attempt is retried, and unacceptable
+  elsewhere. Where used, it logs.
+- An unexpected exception is left to propagate out of the CLI. It is a defect
+  and its backtrace is wanted.
+- **The library never calls `exit` or `abort`.** Exit status is decided at the
+  process entry point, from the value `Automatic::CLI.run` returns.
+
+### 1.8 Logging and output
+
+- **A library file never calls `puts`, `print` or `warn`.** It logs, through
+  `Automatic::Log`.
+- The CLI writes diagnostics to standard error and requested output — help,
+  version, subcommand results — to standard output.
+- A plugin whose purpose is to write to the terminal holds its output object in
+  an instance variable defaulting to `$stdout`, so that a test can substitute it.
+- `info` says what a step did, `warn` says what was skipped, `error` says what
+  failed. An error that was rescued is logged at `warn` or `error`, never at
+  `info`.
+- No log line contains a credential. A plugin that logs its own settings
+  wholesale is a defect.
+
+### 1.9 Filesystem access
+
+- The framework touches two roots: the installation directory and
+  `~/.automatic`. Nothing else, and no absolute path elsewhere appears in the
+  code.
+- Paths are built with `File.join` and `File.expand_path`, never by string
+  concatenation.
+- The user directory takes precedence over the installation, for plugins,
+  Recipes, databases and assets alike. Where a part of it is absent, the
+  installation's own directory is the fallback.
+- `scaffold` creates and never overwrites. `unscaffold` removes the whole user
+  directory and is the one destructive operation the framework offers; it is not
+  extended, and nothing else acquires the ability to delete an operator's data.
+- A plugin writes only where its settings tell it to.
+
+### 1.10 Network access
+
+- **The framework reaches nothing.** No update check, no telemetry, no
+  phone-home. Every request is a plugin's, on a Recipe's instruction.
+- HTTPS is used wherever the service offers it. A plugin that still uses plain
+  HTTP is a defect to be recorded, and one that sends a credential over plain
+  HTTP is recorded as such in [`PLUGINS.md`](PLUGINS.md).
+- **TLS certificate verification is never disabled.** There is no acceptable
+  reason, and a plugin that did it has been corrected.
+- A plugin that fetches repeatedly from one host supports `interval` and its
+  documentation says to set it. Scraping politely is a requirement, not a
+  courtesy.
+- A URL that comes from a setting or from feed content is escaped before use,
+  and is never interpolated into a shell command. An external command is run as
+  an argument vector.
+- **A URL that comes from feed content is external input.** It is fetched
+  through `Automatic::Http`, which restricts the scheme to HTTP and HTTPS,
+  because `URI.open` on such a string will read a local file as readily as an
+  article.
+- Every request has a connect and a read timeout. An unattended run that hangs
+  is a failure mode with no upper bound on its cost.
+
+### 1.11 Security and credentials
+
+- **A Recipe is trusted local configuration**, equivalent to a shell script the
+  operator wrote. This is the trust boundary, it is stated in
+  `REQUIREMENTS.md` section 17, and it is the premise the following rules assume.
+- Even so, YAML is loaded safely, so that a Recipe cannot name a Ruby class to
+  instantiate. This costs nothing, since no Recipe needs it, and it removes a
+  second and avoidable path to code execution. **Do not present this as making
+  an untrusted Recipe safe**; the loader is not the boundary.
+- Credentials are Recipe settings. That makes a Recipe holding them a secret
+  file, which the documentation says plainly rather than glossing over.
+- No credential in the repository: not in an example Recipe, not in a fixture,
+  not in a test, not in a comment. The example Recipes in `config/` need none.
+- No credential in the log, in an exception message, or in a pipeline item.
+- No credential in CI. A test that needs one is not part of the default suite.
+- A change that touches authentication says in its `VERSIONS` entry what it
+  changed.
+
+### 1.12 Judging a change
+
+- Does it keep the Recipe format and the plugin contract, and if not, is that
+  deliberate and recorded?
+- Does it respect the direction of dependency?
+- Does it leave the framework the small part?
+- Does it keep a plugin's dependency out of everyone else's installation?
+- Is it the smallest change that does the job?
+- Does a test say it works, and does the default suite still need no network?
+- Do the documents still match the code, in the same commit?
+
+---
+
+## 2. Ruby Policy
+
+### 2.1 Style
+
+The prevailing style of this repository is what a change matches. It is not
+current fashion and that is deliberate: a change written in a different style
+makes a diff harder to read than the style saves.
+
+- Two-space indentation. No tabs. No trailing whitespace. A newline at end of
+  file.
+- Single quotes for a plain string, double quotes when interpolating.
+- `snake_case` for methods and variables, `CamelCase` for classes, `SCREAMING_
+  SNAKE_CASE` for constants.
+- Braces for blocks are the established idiom here, including multi-line blocks,
+  and were chosen to avoid stacked `end`s. Existing code is left as it is. New
+  code may use either; matching the surrounding file matters more than the
+  choice.
+- Lines around 100 columns. Not enforced, and not a reason to reformat.
+- Prefer a guard clause to a wrapping `unless`, in new code.
+
+### 2.2 Scope of a change
+
+- **Do not reformat a file you are not otherwise changing.** A large diff hides
+  the change inside it.
+- Do not rename a class, a method or a setting because the name is dated. The
+  names in this repository are domain vocabulary: Recipe, pipeline, plugin,
+  subscription, publish. They stay.
+- Do not restructure a plugin while fixing it. A compatibility fix and a rewrite
+  are two changes.
+- Where a file is being substantially changed anyway, bringing it to the current
+  style is fine.
+
+### 2.3 File headers
+
+Every Ruby file carries a header comment. Values start in the same column,
+using `Source Code::`, the longest label, as the alignment baseline. Fields
+appear in the order shown below. An executable uses this canonical form:
+
+```ruby
+#!/usr/bin/env ruby
+# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
+# Name::        automatic
+# Author:       id774 (More info: http://id774.net)
+# Source Code:: https://github.com/id774/automaticruby
+# License::     The GPL version 3, or LGPL version 3 (Dual License).
+# Contact::     idnanashi@gmail.com
+# Created::     Feb 18, 2012
+# Updated::     Aug 14, 2026
+# Copyright::   Copyright (c) 2012-2026 Automatic Ruby Developers.
+```
+
+- Only files directly invoked as executables carry the shebang. Libraries,
+  plugins and specs omit the shebang and otherwise use the same form.
+- `Name` is the fully qualified name of what the file defines.
+- `Author` records the author or authors established by the file and its Git
+  history. The former name `774` is normalized to `id774`; third-party authors
+  are never removed or replaced, and multiple authors retain their recorded
+  order. Names and URLs are not inferred when the history does not provide them.
+- The labels are exactly `Name::`, `Author:`, `Source Code::`, `License::`,
+  `Contact::`, `Created::`, `Updated::` and `Copyright::`.
+- `Created` is never changed.
+- `Updated` is set to the date of a change that affects behaviour. A
+  documentation-only or formatting-only change does not touch it.
+- The project-level copyright notice is `Copyright (c) 2012-2026 Automatic
+  Ruby Developers.` Explicit third-party copyright notices are preserved and
+  are not inferred from the `Author` field.
+- The `License` line records the GPLv3 or LGPLv3 dual license and matches
+  [`LICENSE.md`](LICENSE.md).
+- A `Description::` line may be added below `Name` when the file's purpose is
+  not obvious from its name. New plugins should have one.
+- The magic encoding comment is redundant on the supported Rubies. It is left in
+  place in existing files, because removing it from forty files is a diff with
+  no benefit, and it is not required in a new file.
+
+Files do not carry a per-file version history. This repository versions at the
+repository level only; see section 10.
+
+### 2.4 Ruby version compatibility
+
+- The supported range is stated in one place, `automatic.gemspec`
+  (`required_ruby_version`), and the README and the documents agree with it. The
+  set CI validates is a narrower statement and lives in the matrix; section 11
+  says how the two relate.
+- **Compatibility is written in the range's common API.** Where a Ruby release
+  deprecates or removes something, the replacement chosen is the one that works
+  unchanged on every supported version. `URI::Parser#escape` becoming obsolete
+  is answered by naming `URI::RFC2396_Parser`, which means the same thing on all
+  of them — not by a `RUBY_VERSION` branch.
+- **A `RUBY_VERSION` conditional is a last resort**, for a difference that has
+  no common expression. Two implementations of one behaviour cost more than the
+  compatibility they buy: the branch not taken is the branch not tested.
+- **Code for an unsupported Ruby is removed, not kept for safety.** A
+  `RUBY_VERSION` comparison against 1.8 or 1.9, a branch for an interpreter that
+  cannot install the dependencies, and a shim for a method that has been in core
+  for a decade are all deleted.
+- Nothing is written against a feature newer than the floor.
+- A method removed by Ruby is replaced by its supported equivalent, and that is
+  a compatibility fix rather than a refactor: `Kernel#open` on a URL becomes
+  `URI.open`, `File.exists?` becomes `File.exist?`.
+- **A library leaving the standard library is not by itself a reason to declare
+  it.** Ruby moves libraries to default and then to bundled gems as it goes.
+  Each one is judged on what actually requires it: the framework's own
+  requirement becomes a runtime dependency, a plugin's becomes an optional one
+  (section 9.1), and a requirement left over from code that no longer uses it is
+  deleted.
+
+### 2.5 Requiring
+
+- The framework requires only what the framework uses. A plugin's library never
+  appears in `lib/`.
+- A plugin requires its libraries at the top of its own file.
+- A library needed only by an optional path is required inside that path, so the
+  plugin loads without it. The S3 branch of `StoreFile` is the example.
+- The CLI requires a subcommand's libraries inside that subcommand, so a
+  command that does not use `feedbag` or the OPML parser does not load them.
+- **An optional gem is required through `Automatic.require_optional`**, which
+  names the gem, what needed it and how to install it when it is absent. A bare
+  `require` of an optional gem answers a solvable problem with
+  `cannot load such file`, which is not the framework's best answer.
+- **`Bundler.require` is not how the framework loads its dependencies.** An
+  installed library must not impose a bundle on the program requiring it. The
+  Bundler setup in `environment.rb` is a convenience for a source checkout and
+  does nothing when there is no `Gemfile`.
+
+---
+
+## 3. Plugins
+
+- A new plugin follows [`PLUGINS.md`](PLUGINS.md) section 3, which is the
+  contract, and section 3.10, which says which category it belongs in.
+- **Converting the pipeline into some other representation is a `Publish`
+  plugin's work, and the result stays inside the plugin.** It is serialized at
+  the boundary, written to the destination, and never passed along the pipeline
+  or made known to the framework, which keeps Invariant 2 and section 1.5
+  intact. Producing a portable document — one a person can read, ordinary tools
+  can process and another program can be given, with no service behind it — is
+  a destination like any other and belongs in that category.
+- A new plugin is added to the catalogue in `PLUGINS.md` section 6 in the same
+  change, with its settings table and its status.
+- A new plugin comes with a spec that reaches no network.
+- A plugin's dependency is not added to the gemspec's runtime dependencies; see
+  section 9.
+- A change to an existing plugin does not change what an existing Recipe means
+  unless that is the point of the change.
+
+---
+
+## 4. The life of a plugin
+
+Plugins outlive the services they talk to. The policy for what happens then:
+
+- **A shipped plugin has a current practical use.** That is the condition for
+  being in the gem, and it is a condition that has to keep being met, not one
+  met once. Having been useful is not the test.
+- **A plugin is classified, in `PLUGINS.md` section 6**, as Supported, Supported
+  (external) or Needs rework, with the reason. There is no status meaning
+  "does not work and never will"; a plugin in that position is removed.
+- **A dead integration is never faked into life.** No stub of a shut-down
+  service, no mock that makes an integration look alive, no test that asserts
+  against a simulation. This is Invariant 7 and it has no exceptions. If a
+  plugin can only be made to look supported by simulating what it talks to,
+  what it needs is deletion, not a double.
+- **Unsupported code is not kept for preservation.** Git history holds every
+  implementation this project ever shipped, and holds it without installing it
+  on anyone's machine or listing it in a catalogue an operator reads for
+  guidance. A plugin retained only so that its code exists somewhere is
+  retained for a reason the version control system already covers.
+- **The judgement is evidenced.** "Nobody uses that any more" is not a reason.
+  The service's own site, its API documentation or its published shutdown
+  notice is, and the reason goes in the catalogue entry or in the removal
+  record. Where the evidence cannot be obtained, the plugin is classified
+  **Needs rework** and kept: the failure mode of guessing is deleting something
+  that works.
+- **Needs rework means restoration is realistic.** A capability the service
+  still offers, reachable by a current API, with the work amounting to a
+  migration rather than a new project. A plugin whose service is gone is not
+  Needs rework; it is removed.
+- **Restoring a plugin to a service's current API** is a separate change, one
+  plugin at a time, with the catalogue entry updated in the same commit. Where
+  the current API forces a credential format the old Recipe cannot express,
+  that is a breaking change and is documented as one rather than hidden behind
+  a translation.
+- **Removing a plugin removes all of it**: implementation, specs, example and
+  integration Recipes, catalogue entry, and any optional dependency nothing
+  else needs. A class left behind to raise "this no longer works" is not a
+  courtesy; the loader's `NoPluginError` says the same thing earlier and
+  without shipping code.
+- **A removal is recorded in `VERSIONS`** in enough detail that an operator
+  whose Recipe breaks can find out why, and the reasons are kept in
+  `PLUGINS.md`. Removals are batched into a release rather than trickled, so
+  that an upgrade has one list to read.
+- **A modernized plugin keeps its Recipe's meaning.** Class names, setting
+  names and defaults are not changed for tidiness; where a fix makes a plugin
+  behave as its documentation always said it did, that is still a behaviour
+  change and the catalogue entry says so.
+- **A Supported plugin has deterministic local tests.** They cover this side of
+  the boundary — settings, request construction, serialization, response
+  handling, error behaviour — and reach no network, need no credential and
+  require no running service. The availability of somebody else's API is not
+  something a unit test can assert and is not something required CI waits on.
+
+---
+
+## 5. Testing
+
+- **RSpec**, under `spec/`, mirroring the source tree: `spec/lib/` for the
+  framework and `spec/plugins/<category>/` for plugins.
+- **The default suite reaches no network and needs no credential.** This is
+  Invariant 6. A spec that would is not written; the integration Recipes under
+  `test/integration/` are where that belongs, and they are run by hand.
+- A framework spec covers the loader, the Recipe, the pipeline, the log and the
+  CLI's exit statuses.
+- A plugin spec constructs the plugin with a `config` and a pipeline built by
+  `AutomaticSpec.generate_pipeline`, calls `run`, and asserts on the result.
+- **An example that reaches a real host is tagged `:network`** and is excluded
+  from the default suite and from CI. It is kept, because it is a real test and
+  is the way to check a plugin against the service it talks to, and it is run
+  deliberately with `AUTOMATIC_NETWORK_SPECS=1`. Several of these point at hosts
+  that no longer serve what they expect, which is a further reason not to make
+  them a gate. A new example that reaches a host is tagged; one that does not is
+  never given the tag to make a failure go away.
+- **The default suite does not depend on an optional plugin gem.** A gem the
+  `Gemfile` declares in an optional group is not installed by `bundle install`,
+  so the plugins that need it are not verified by the default suite or by the
+  required workflow. That is a decision, taken here, and not something a failure
+  discovers: the gems it applies to are the declared list
+  `AutomaticSpec::OPTIONAL_PLUGIN_GEMS`, a spec whose plugin needs one guards
+  its file with `AutomaticSpec.optional_dependency?`, and naming a gem that is
+  not on the list raises rather than skipping. Selecting the group with
+  `bundle config set --local with plugins` and installing runs those specs as
+  part of the ordinary suite.
+- **A guard is a skip with a reason, not a `pending`.** A spec outside the
+  default suite prints why it is outside it and does not run; the default
+  suite's output is a list of what was verified rather than a list of what was
+  not.
+- A spec whose plugin's gem is not installed is skipped by
+  `AutomaticSpec.plugin_available?`, which names the missing gem. That is the
+  intended behaviour and is not worked around by faking the gem.
+- **The default suite is kept small and reliable rather than large.** It reaches
+  no network, needs no credential, needs no external daemon, writes outside no
+  temporary directory of its own, redirects `HOME`, and does not depend on
+  filesystem ordering, on the clock or on a random seed. A test that cannot be
+  made repeatable does not belong in it. Guaranteeing fewer things reliably is
+  the better trade, and it is not the same as weakening a test: `|| true`,
+  `continue-on-error` and a rescue that swallows a failure are forbidden, and
+  the tests that remain are held strictly.
+- **A spec does not write outside its own temporary directory.** Where a plugin
+  resolves a path under the home directory, the spec redirects `HOME` to a
+  temporary directory rather than operating on the developer's real
+  `~/.automatic`.
+- Coverage is measured with SimpleCov when `COVERAGE=on`, and is not a gate. The
+  historical `rcov` and `simplecov-rcov` tooling has been removed; it existed
+  for Ruby 1.8 and for a CI server that no longer runs.
+- `rake spec` runs the suite; `rake spec:lib` and `rake spec:plugins` run the
+  halves. `rake` alone runs `spec`.
+- CI runs `bundle install` and `rake spec` on every supported Ruby version, and
+  nothing that needs a secret.
+
+---
+
+## 6. Command line
+
+- **The CLI is a library**, `Automatic::CLI`, and `bin/automatic` is a process
+  entry point that does nothing but call it and exit with its result.
+- `CLI.run` returns an `Integer` and never calls `exit`, so the command line is
+  unit-testable.
+- Exit statuses are fixed: `0` did the work or printed help or version, `1`
+  failed or nothing was asked for, `2` the command line was rejected.
+- `--help` and `--version` exit `0` and print to standard output.
+- Option parsing uses `optparse` from the standard library. **No CLI framework
+  is introduced**; the interface is one option and seven subcommands, and a gem
+  for that would be a dependency for nothing.
+- The subcommands and the meaning of `-c` are part of the compatibility promise.
+  Adding a subcommand is fine; removing or renaming one is a breaking change.
+- A subcommand prints its result to standard output, because printing is what it
+  is for.
+
+---
+
+## 7. Backward compatibility
+
+What this repository promises not to break, absent a deliberate and recorded
+decision:
+
+| Interface | Promise |
+| --- | --- |
+| Recipe format | A Recipe that worked keeps working |
+| Plugin contract | `new(config, pipeline)` and `run` |
+| Plugin naming | The class-name-to-file-path rule |
+| User directory | `~/.automatic` and its four subdirectories |
+| User plugin precedence | The user directory shadows the installation |
+| CLI | `-c`, the subcommand names, and the exit statuses |
+| Store databases | Existing SQLite files stay readable |
+| Gem name | `automatic`, providing the `automatic` executable |
+
+Breaking one of these is a decision, taken deliberately, recorded in
+[`VERSIONS`](VERSIONS) in terms an operator can act on, and never a side effect
+of a clean-up. Adding an optional setting whose default preserves current
+behaviour breaks nothing.
+
+---
+
+## 8. Documentation
+
+- **Documentation is updated in the same change as the behaviour it describes.**
+  A behaviour change with no documentation change has not been finished.
+- The documents divide as follows, and one fact has one home:
+
+  | Document | Holds |
+  | --- | --- |
+  | `README.md` | The entry point: what it is, how to install and run it, where everything else is |
+  | `doc/REQUIREMENTS.md` | What the system is for and what it guarantees |
+  | `doc/BASIC_DESIGN.md` | How it is composed |
+  | `doc/PLUGINS.md` | The Recipe format, the plugin contract, the plugin catalogue |
+  | `doc/POLICY.md` | This document: how a change is made and judged |
+  | `doc/DEPLOYMENT.md` | Installing, running and operating it |
+  | `doc/VERSIONS` | Release history |
+  | `doc/LICENSE.md`, `doc/COPYING`, `doc/COPYING.LESSER` | The licence |
+  | `doc/AUTHORS` | Contributors |
+
+- **No cross-repository reference.** These documents never say "see the policy
+  of another repository", or "as in *X*". Everything needed to understand,
+  build, run and change this repository is here. Another repository may be a
+  useful reference while working, and it is not a citation.
+- **Documents are in English**, as are code, comments and commit messages.
+  Japanese appears only where it is data: a search keyword in an example, a
+  broadcast station name in a plugin's settings.
+- Markdown documents may assume a renderer. `VERSIONS`, `COPYING`, `COPYING.LESSER` and `AUTHORS`
+  are plain text and keep their extensionless names, which are the names they
+  are published and linked under.
+- Prose wraps near the width the document already uses. `VERSIONS` follows
+  section 10.4 instead.
+- **A document is not deleted for being old.** It is deleted when its content
+  has been moved somewhere that is now the source of truth, and the move is
+  recorded in `VERSIONS`.
+
+---
+
+## 9. Dependencies
+
+### 9.1 The split
+
+Install the core by default; install a plugin's dependencies only when they are
+needed. Dependencies fall into three groups, and which group a gem is in is a
+decision, not an accident:
+
+**Runtime dependencies** — declared in `automatic.gemspec`, installed by `gem
+install automatic`. A gem is here only if a file in `lib/` requires it: what
+`require 'automatic'`, loading a Recipe, loading a plugin, running a pipeline
+and the command line itself need, and nothing more. A gem that reached this list
+because of a plugin, because a plugin no longer uses it, or because a Ruby
+release moved a library out of the standard library, is moved back out.
+
+**Optional dependencies** — used by one plugin or a few, required inside the
+plugin's own file, declared in an optional group of the `Gemfile`, and **not
+declared as runtime dependencies**. An operator who uses that plugin installs
+the gem. This is Invariant 4, and it is why installing this gem does not install
+an AWS SDK.
+
+The permanent rules of the split:
+
+- **A core dependency is one the framework itself has.** A plugin's dependency
+  is never a framework runtime dependency, however useful, popular or
+  Supported that plugin is. How many Recipes happen to use it is not the test;
+  what `lib/` requires is.
+- **The operator who uses the plugin installs its gem.** Not having it must
+  never stop the framework from starting, and a Recipe that does not name the
+  plugin must run without it.
+- **A new plugin does not increase the core dependencies.** Adding one to the
+  runtime list needs an architectural justification — the framework itself
+  came to need the gem — recorded with the change; wanting the plugin to work
+  out of the box is not one.
+- **The default tests and required CI do not depend on an optional
+  integration.** Being in this group has that intended consequence: those
+  plugins are not part of what a green build guarantees. See section 5.
+- **An unsupported or optional integration does not decide a framework-wide
+  dependency.** Where one plugin needs a gem, that gem is the plugin's.
+
+A missing optional gem is reported, not merely raised: the plugin requires it
+through `Automatic.require_optional`, which names the gem, what needed it and
+how to install it. That helper is the whole of the mechanism, and no dependency
+manager, plugin manifest or resolver is introduced beyond it.
+
+**Development dependencies** — the test and build tooling.
+
+### 9.2 Adding, updating and removing
+
+- A gem is added when something committed here uses it, and the commit says
+  which plugin and why.
+- **Dependencies are not raised in bulk.** Each is updated for a reason —
+  a security fix, a Ruby compatibility requirement, an API this repository
+  needs — and the code that uses it is checked against the new version. Bumping
+  everything to latest and then repairing what broke is not how this is done.
+- Version constraints are ranges wide enough not to conflict with the rest of an
+  operator's bundle, and tight enough to exclude a major version this code has
+  not been checked against.
+- A gem no longer used by anything committed here is removed.
+- A gem whose service no longer exists is removed, along with the plugin that
+  needed it; see section 4. An optional group left with nothing to install is
+  deleted from the `Gemfile` in the same change.
+- **Nothing is vendored.** Dependencies come from RubyGems, which keeps their
+  licences theirs.
+
+### 9.3 Sources
+
+- One gem source: `https://rubygems.org`.
+- **No plain-HTTP source, ever.** `http://rubygems.org` in a `Gemfile` is a
+  defect, not a style question.
+- No source that has shut down. `gems.github.com` has not existed since 2014 and
+  is not to reappear.
+
+### 9.4 Packaging
+
+- The gemspec is **hand-maintained**. It was generated by Jeweler, which is no
+  longer maintained and which required its own Rake tasks and a `VERSION` file
+  to regenerate a file that is easier to simply edit. The generator is gone; the
+  file is now source.
+- The gemspec states `required_ruby_version`, the licence, the homepage, the
+  source code URL and the metadata links, and its `files` list is derived from
+  what Git tracks so that it cannot drift.
+- The `Gemfile` declares the source and evaluates the gemspec, so that runtime
+  dependencies are stated once. Development and optional gems are groups in the
+  `Gemfile`.
+- `Gemfile.lock` is not committed. This is a library, and locking would impose a
+  resolution on every consumer.
+- `Rakefile` carries the test tasks and nothing else. It is not a build system,
+  and no build system is introduced.
+- A release requires green required CI. Its built gem is inspected and installed
+  locally before publication, and its source version and metadata must agree.
+- A published version is immutable. Credentials are never committed, and
+  release commits and tags are not rewritten to conceal a publication error.
+- The manual publication procedure is [`RELEASING.md`](RELEASING.md). Publishing
+  is an explicit maintainer action, not a side effect of a build or test task.
+
+---
+
+## 10. Versioning
+
+### 10.1 Scheme
+
+Releases are numbered `<year>.<month>`, two digits each, taken from the release
+date. This is the scheme the project has used since its first release in
+February 2012, it mimics Ubuntu's, and it does not change.
+
+```text
+26.08      a release made in August 2026
+26.08.1    a release correcting 26.08, in the same month
+```
+
+A third `<patch>` level is appended only when a release corrects an earlier one
+without accumulating a month's work. `14.12.1` and `14.12.2` are historical
+examples.
+
+The number carries no compatibility meaning. A month is not a major version, and
+a compatibility break is signalled by what the `VERSIONS` entry says, not by the
+number.
+
+### 10.2 Where the version is written
+
+The release version appears in three places, which are changed together in one
+commit:
+
+| Place | Form |
+| --- | --- |
+| `VERSION` | `26.08` |
+| `lib/automatic/version.rb` | `Automatic::VERSION` |
+| `doc/VERSIONS` | The entry heading |
+
+`automatic.gemspec` reads `VERSION`, and `automatic --version` prints
+`Automatic::VERSION`, so neither is a separate place to update.
+
+Historically `lib/automatic/version.rb` carried a `-devel` suffix between
+releases while `VERSION` did not, and a spec asserted the exact string. That
+divergence is not continued: the two agree, and the spec asserts that they
+agree rather than asserting a literal.
+
+### 10.3 What is a release
+
+- **Work that is not released yet takes no version of its own.** It belongs to
+  the entry already standing at the top of `doc/VERSIONS`.
+- An unreleased entry carries `(Release Date: TBD)`. Replacing that with the
+  date is the release itself, and is not a change to record inside the entry.
+- **A repository that has not yet made its first release is in its initial
+  construction stage**, and that stage takes no entry here. The work of building
+  up to the first release is not accumulated in `doc/VERSIONS` one by one: the
+  file is the record of released versions, not of the construction that precedes
+  the first of them, and its first entry is written when that release is made.
+- **A series of changes made on one day is one version**, not several. Do not
+  split a day's work across version numbers.
+- **A version that actually existed is never merged into another**, even when it
+  shares a date with one. `14.10.0` and `14.10.1` were both released on
+  2014-10-23 and both stay.
+- A documentation-only change takes no entry unless its scale makes it worth one
+  line saying so.
+- Git tags carry the release version, and are created only when a release is
+  made.
+
+### 10.4 How `doc/VERSIONS` is written
+
+`doc/VERSIONS` is a version-level summary of what each release changed. It is
+not a transcription of the commit log: the commits record how the work happened,
+the version history records what it amounts to.
+
+- Record externally meaningful or architecturally significant outcomes, such
+  as compatibility, security, public interfaces, major features, packaging,
+  licensing, documentation architecture and test strategy.
+- Omit development-time corrections, implementation details and intermediate
+  states that were reverted or superseded before release. Git history retains
+  that process.
+- Summarize related low-level changes under their substantive outcome instead
+  of listing each method, dependency, test or file separately.
+
+- Each entry opens with `vX.YY (YYYY-MM-DD)`, or `vX.YY (Release Date: TBD)`
+  while unreleased, underlined with `-`, followed by one `-` bullet per change.
+  Newest first. UTF-8.
+- **One coherent change is one bullet on one physical line.** The entry is a
+  list meant to be scanned, and a wrapped bullet costs it that: the eye no
+  longer finds the changes by counting lines, and a diff no longer shows one
+  added line per added change.
+- This is a deliberate exception to the wrapping the other plain text documents
+  follow. Do not rewrap `doc/VERSIONS` to 80 columns, and do not report a long
+  bullet there as a defect.
+- Aim for about 100 columns. A bullet carrying file names, module names, setting
+  names or plugin names may run to about 120, or past it when the names it needs
+  are that long. These figures prompt a reread, they are not a limit to enforce.
+  A bullet that is long because the change is long is correct.
+- **When a bullet runs long, abstract it; never break it across lines.** Drop
+  the implementation detail, the example, the reason and the secondary effect,
+  and state what the change is. Keep what a reader cannot reconstruct without
+  it: what changed, what is now observably different, what it does to
+  compatibility, what it does to security, and the identifiers someone would
+  search for.
+- Changes serving one purpose are described together even when they touch
+  several files. Related changes to one file within a version are normally one
+  bullet. Changes to one file carrying independent meaning are not forced
+  together — coherence decides, not the file name.
+- Entries touching the same file, plugin or feature are placed near each other,
+  so that a version reads as a coherent whole. An independent change belonging
+  with nothing already listed is appended to the end of the current entry.
+- Order within a version serves the reader, not the commit history.
+- Released entries retain their substantive history even when their wording or
+  level of detail predates these rules.
+- `doc/VERSIONS` carries these guidelines again at its foot.
+
+### 10.5 The historical record
+
+- **Past entries and their dates are not rewritten**, not to correct their
+  wording, not to renumber them, and not to make them consistent with this
+  document's current rules. They are the record of what was released.
+- The release history was previously kept in `doc/ChangeLog`. It has been moved
+  into `doc/VERSIONS` in full, and `doc/ChangeLog` is gone; the two documents
+  had the same responsibility and keeping both meant keeping two records that
+  would diverge. No entry and no date was changed in the move.
+- Where the record is incomplete — releases with no tag, or a version bumped
+  with no entry — `VERSIONS` says so rather than inventing an entry.
+
+---
+
+## 11. Continuous integration
+
+- CI runs on GitHub Actions. `.github/workflows/ci.yml` is the required check;
+  `.github/workflows/plugins.yml` is a separate, non-required workflow that
+  installs the optional `plugins` group and runs the same suite, so that the
+  documented all-plugins setup is checked as well as described.
+- **CI validates representative supported Ruby versions rather than every
+  intermediate release.** The matrix runs the ends of the supported range and
+  the release in the middle. The matrix and `required_ruby_version` are
+  therefore *not* the same set, and neither is wrong: the gemspec states what
+  the code is written for, the matrix states what is checked on every commit.
+  [`REQUIREMENTS.md`](REQUIREMENTS.md) section 20 states both.
+- Removing a version from the matrix is not a statement that it fails, and no
+  incompatibility is introduced to make it one.
+- What CI does is: install the bundle, build the gem, load the library, run the
+  command line, run the default suite. It is deliberately short, and an optional
+  integration is not added to it.
+- **CI holds no secret and reaches no external service.** No credential is
+  configured, and no integration test against a third-party API is run there.
+- **The required workflow installs no optional plugin gem**, so no plugin's own
+  dependency is a condition of the check that gates a change. The minimal
+  configuration is what it runs, which is what keeps the split of section 9.1
+  honest over time. Where an optional integration is worth testing at all, it is
+  tested separately from the required workflow; section 5 says how.
+- **A non-required workflow is held to the same standard as the required one.**
+  It is separate so that an optional dependency cannot gate a change, not so
+  that it may fail quietly.
+- **A failure is fixed, not silenced.** `|| true`, `continue-on-error` and a
+  step that hides its exit status are not how a build is made green. Narrowing
+  what is guaranteed is a legitimate answer; pretending to guarantee it is not.
+- The Jenkins instance the project used until 2015 is gone. References to it
+  have been removed and are not to be reintroduced.
+- A red build is fixed or reverted. It is not left red.