maintaining-agent-guidancelisted

# Maintaining Agent Guidance Place each durable proposition at the smallest authoritative owner that can prevent the problem or answer the recurring decision. Keep complementary layers distinct and avoid duplicated policy. ## Take the settled-owner fast path When the requested change is a bounded correction and its owner is already clear: 1. Inspect nearby guidance and any thin route that could become inconsistent. 2. Edit the authoritative owner and reconcile only directly affected references. 3. Validate the changed surface. Stop there. Do not reopen the full ownership question merely because durable guidance changed. Use the remaining workflow when the edit introduces a proposition, challenges placement, exposes duplication, or changes who needs the information. ## Establish or assess a project baseline When asked to onboard a project, evaluate its guidance, or recommend improvements, inspect the current authorities and real project evidence before proposing a baseline. Unless the user asks for edits, remain read-only. Look for the smallest evidence-supported set of guidance: - thin scoped routes to the relevant authorities; - canonical human-facing truth for stable architecture, product behavior, and contributor knowledge; - mechanical enforcement for objective invariants; - non-obvious local constraints that relevant work must know; - supported commands or entry points that contributors and agents need to find; and - deliberate no-artifact decisions for local, t