audita/docs/roadmap/commandkit.md

CommandKit Adoption Outline

Updated: 2026-11-09

Status: Adoption target selected; the upstream release gate is satisfied. Implementation remains pending. The master roadmap owns shared direction, exact dependency revisions, and sequencing; ConfigKit and PromptKit contracts are developed in their outlines.

Baseline and Target

Audita currently uses application-owned CLI parsing, inspection commands, and reporting, described in the CLI contract. Adopt CommandKit core, ckconfig, and ckprompt v0.6.0 as the standard operator interface. Use supported command declarations, typed inputs, supplied-value tracking, help/version, reporting, and formatting. Audita handlers retain transcript processing and artifact responsibilities.

The upstream core release, ckconfig release, ckprompt release, and consumer guide define the selected set. Core uses Cobra/pflag and declares Go 1.26.0; the matched integrations require Go 1.27. They retain ConfigKit v1.1.0 and PromptKit v0.20.0.

Adoption Gate: Released Debug Binding and Reporting Mode Access

Satisfied by the selected v0.6.0 release set. Upstream publication, public APIs, released integration dependencies, and the required behavior were verified in the review below.

Both required capabilities are available:

• A BoolFlag named debug attaches to the shared reporting option and supplies its parsed boolean independently of the reporting mode for artifact capture.
• Invocation.ReportingMode() exposes the resolved reporting mode for quiet transcript-destination validation.

The master dependency selection records exact published versions and source revisions. No unreleased dependency, local replacement, private-state inspection, or duplicate argument parsing is needed. Audita integration and its acceptance tests remain implementation work; the released capabilities remove the upstream availability blocker.

Agreed Operator Experience

• Install the full ckprompt inspection surface: prompt/profile/backend views, resource and namespace/collection inventories, contextual requirement inspection, and captured engine configuration through its config scope. Native reports and namespace selection must remain available; a curated Audita subset is not a substitute.
• Apply the resolved profile-summary decision: retire the curated profiles view, use standard configuration/resource inspection and request preview, and add no replacement custom role summary at this stage.
• Adopt standard ckconfig viewing, validation, sources, path discovery, explanation, and comparison. Use native evidence and common text/YAML/JSON rendering. Do not recreate removed provider-specific explanation writers.
• Use standard command names and reporting flags. CommandKit owns --debug; its parsed boolean also enables Audita artifact capture for processing runs, independently of the resolved reporting mode, as resolved below.
• Keep domain transcript serialization and ordinary report files under Audita's output contracts. Generic report formatting need not transform transcript JSON. Preserve meaningful partial success: a work-unit model error is not automatically a failed CLI invocation or a reporter warning.
• Preserve safe library redaction without restricting standard inspection to today's curated fields. Loading for help/version must not trigger credentials, provider calls, or domain processing.

Debug Reporting and Artifact Capture — Resolved

Use one --debug flag for detailed diagnostics: standard CommandKit debug reporting plus retained Audita diagnostic artifacts during processing. Do not introduce --debug-artifacts, duplicate the reserved flag, or add a second parser. Artifact capture follows the parsed --debug boolean independently of the resolved reporting mode. In particular, --debug --quiet suppresses ordinary CLI output while retaining diagnostic artifacts; --debug --verbose also retains them. CommandKit continues to own CLI visibility and mode ordering.

Use the native boolean semantics: omission disables capture, --debug enables it, --debug=false disables it, and the last debug occurrence wins. Quiet and verbose flags do not rewrite this value. Aliases refer to the same input; tokens consumed as other flag values or following -- do not count as debug flags.

Inspection commands keep standard debug reporting without creating processing artifacts. Help and migration guidance must explain that supplying --debug for processing also writes diagnostic files, including when quiet suppresses output. Report artifact locations through CommandKit's normal visibility rules; artifact creation does not require an always-visible message in quiet mode. Retain Audita's artifact redaction and lifecycle responsibilities. There is no separate capture switch in this design.

Use CommandKit's released optional BoolFlag binding named debug, with a false default, to initialize capture from its typed boolean value. The resolved-mode accessor serves destination validation and reporting decisions; capture follows the bound value independently. The upstream review below records the matching released contract.

Quiet Mode and the Completion Summary — Resolved

Adopt CommandKit's standard visibility rules. Emit the completion summary and created report/debug locations as informational diagnostics through the shared reporter, using deferred information when final ordering requires it. Show them in verbose and debug modes; suppress them in ordinary and quiet modes. Keep diagnostics separate from transcript stdout and announce completion only after processing and enabled required outputs have succeeded.

Output	Ordinary	Verbose/debug	Quiet
Transcript on stdout, when selected	Shown	Shown	Rejected before processing
Completion summary and created artifact locations	Hidden	Shown	Hidden
Requested transcript and ordinary report files	Written	Written	Written
Fatal error explanation	Shown	Shown	Shown

Debug capture follows the independent boolean decision above in every reporting mode. Quiet does not cancel processing or suppress file writes. Recoverable model-operation failures retain their domain meaning and ordinary report records; do not promote them to fatal errors or warnings merely to make them visible.

This deliberately retires the always-visible completion summary. Help and hard-cutover guidance must explain that operators wanting immediate counts and locations should select verbose/debug reporting. If ordinary reports are disabled, those modes are needed to see the completion counts. Operators wanting a transcript while quiet is effective must select an explicit destination, as resolved below.

Quiet Processing Requires a Transcript Destination — Resolved

Reject a processing invocation when its resolved reporting mode is quiet and its selected transcript destination is stdout. Require an explicit non-stdout output destination, such as --output corrected.json. Deliberate disposal remains available through --output /dev/null; do not introduce a --force bypass. An empty output value that selects stdout does not satisfy the requirement.

Audita's primary product is the corrected transcript. Reports and debug evidence do not substitute for delivering it, so their enablement does not exempt a run from this check. The domain-specific restriction prevents incurring processing costs while accidentally discarding that product. It leaves CommandKit's standard quiet semantics intact and does not apply to inspection commands.

Use CommandKit's public resolved-mode accessor and Audita's selected destination. Return a usage failure with a visible explanation before creating output or debug artifacts or starting model calls. For example: "Quiet processing requires an output destination; use --output FILE, or --output /dev/null to discard the transcript deliberately." Do not scan arguments or infer mode from output. Shell redirection does not satisfy the requirement because CommandKit still suppresses stdout transcript delivery.

Check effective mode after native ordering, boolean values, and aliases: --quiet --verbose permits stdout, whereas --verbose --quiet requires an explicit destination. --debug --quiet also requires one; debug capture remains independent once the invocation passes this check.

Request Preview, Validation, and Smoke Commands — Resolved

Include standard ckprompt request preview, request validation, and the complete smoke-command surface in the next major release. Enable the upstream adapters and retain native commands, flags, reports, and outcomes. Smoke commands remain explicit operator-invoked operations, separate from application startup and automated release checks.

Use the standard request inputs directly where they suffice. Where Audita adds role/profile selection, shared instructions, response schemas, or domain inputs, reuse its processing request-construction helpers in the relevant adapters. Preserve native operator overrides and keep generic requests usable without Audita processing context. Request preview and validation operate on supplied inputs; representative validator candidates can come from maintained fixtures without running proposal inference as part of request construction.

Establish runtime and request construction first, then wire preview and validation, followed by smoke commands and assembled-CLI verification. All are required adoption scope. Address concrete integration blockers upstream rather than silently omitting standard capabilities.

For standard CommandKit commands passed through by Audita, provide a concise link to the upstream documentation for the adopted version. Upstream owns their command reference and behavior explanations. Do not duplicate that documentation, add local provider-call/cost warnings, or add caveats or workarounds for perceived limitations of the standard capabilities. Audita documentation covers only its own selectors, request construction, domain inputs, and application-specific behavior. Apply this documentation boundary to the whole standard command suite.

Work Outline

The adoption gate above is satisfied. Follow the master sequence and selected released dependency set when implementing this outline.

1. Inventory Audita commands, arguments, flags, supplied empty/false/zero values, streams, and exit behavior against standard declarations. Record intentional migrations rather than recreating the old parser around CommandKit.
2. Establish shared loaders and scopes using the native ConfigKit and PromptKit integrations. Keep configuration/resource inspection distinct from preparing an actual domain request. Standard scope validation need not reproduce the current combined settings-and-two-roles command; process setup must still establish what execution needs. Review generic override forwarding explicitly.
3. Install standard inspection and configuration commands, native formats, help/version, and suite-consistent aliases/completion through supported APIs. Supply the application's version identity from the ReleaseKit v0.9.0 integration selected in the master roadmap. Do not use a broad private CLI framework around CommandKit.
4. Adapt domain process handlers to reporting/outcome boundaries, preserving transcript/artifact integrity, cancellation, and partial success. Apply the resolved visibility and completion-summary rules above; resolve output-failure behavior before implementation. Standard command statuses, including comparison status 3, should not be forced into the old Audita-only status table without a domain reason. Validate quiet mode against the transcript destination before creating outputs or starting model work, using the released reporting-mode accessor. Wire processing artifact capture to the released shared debug boolean; replace Audita's independent debug parsing with the native binding while retaining its application-owned capture behavior.
5. Enable the standard preview, validation, and full smoke capabilities using the resolved adapter and sequencing approach above. Share Audita request helpers where domain additions are needed; keep generic resource inspection independent of those domain inputs.
6. Update CLI, configuration, operations, subprocess integration, examples, help, completion guidance, and migration documentation with implementation. Document Audita-specific behavior and link to upstream for standard command usage. Adopt the dependencies and exact attribution together.

Acceptance and Upstream Requests

Check the complete standard inspection/configuration inventory and native formats through the assembled CLI, including failed-load evidence, redaction, source selection, and missing/partial resources. Check help/version without configuration and supplied-value handling through domain settings. Exercise stdout transcript isolation, file output, quiet/verbose/debug behavior, completion summary placement, cancellation, partial success, and output failures.

Verify that the completion summary and created artifact locations appear only in verbose/debug diagnostics, never in transcript stdout. Reject quiet processing with a stdout destination; requested file outputs remain enabled in valid quiet runs. Fatal error explanations remain visible in every mode, and a required-output failure must not produce a successful completion summary. Cover ordinary reporting disabled as well as enabled, and document the loss of the former default summary.

Cover omitted and empty output selections in effective quiet mode, including with reports or debug capture enabled: reject before model calls and artifact creation. Accept valid explicit file and discard destinations. Exercise native mode ordering, explicit false, and aliases so the check follows the resolved mode. Keep quiet inspection valid and help/version free of processing setup.

Verify the independent capture and visibility decisions through CommandKit's parser for processing commands with a valid explicit transcript destination:

Arguments after the command path	Reporting mode	Capture artifacts
None	Ordinary	No
--debug	Debug	Yes
--debug --quiet	Quiet	Yes
--quiet --debug	Debug	Yes
--debug --verbose	Verbose	Yes
--debug --debug=false	Ordinary	No
--debug=false --debug	Debug	Yes
--debug --quiet --debug=false	Quiet	No

Check aliases, explicit false values, and option-looking operands or values through native parsing. Inspection must not create processing artifacts even with debug enabled. Check artifact-location reporting subject to normal visibility and help text explaining capture under quiet mode.

Verify preview, validation, and every standard smoke operation through the assembled CLI using fixtures and controlled providers. Focus on Audita's command registration, engine loading, input forwarding, shared request construction, and native report/outcome handoff. Keep integration coverage proportionate rather than duplicating upstream capability tests.

Tagged core and integration suites passed during review, but do not establish these Audita behaviors. Use offline tests and controlled providers.

CommandKit and integrations are early-stage. Freely propose upstream improvements where reporting, declaration, or integration APIs are problematic or incomplete. The reporting request is fulfilled by the released capabilities described below. The resolved summary and destination decisions use standard reporting behavior; they do not require an ordinary-mode summary channel or an exception to quiet suppression. Record further concrete integration gaps as they arise and prefer shared upstream improvements over a permanent local output layer.

Upstream Review: Shared Debug Input and Reporting Mode

On 2026-11-09, verified published upstream tags for core, ckconfig, and ckprompt v0.6.0 against the exact revisions in the master roadmap. Reviewed the core source changes and external public-API tests. Compared with the previous reviewed integration releases, ckconfig and ckprompt change dependency pins and release notes without changing integration implementation.

The released binding contract and invocation API support the selected design. The shared binding preserves supplied-value tracking, explicit false, repeated occurrences, and aliases. Application defaults affect the bound input, not reporting-mode selection; Audita selects a false default. Invocation.ReportingMode() reports the selection independently of delivery success and remains available after finalization. --debug --quiet therefore retains a true capture input while the reporting mode is quiet.

Using Go 1.27.3, all three tagged module suites passed with GOWORK=off and released dependencies. An isolated consumer importing all three published v0.6.0 modules, without local replacements, passed 33 cases spanning the roadmap's capture/mode combinations, aliases, and quiet-destination policy. The resolved graph selected the intended ConfigKit v1.1.0 and PromptKit v0.20.0 dependencies. These checks establish the upstream gate; they do not replace Audita's assembled integration acceptance. No additional upstream request was identified.

Open Decisions

Output-Failure Behavior

This is the remaining open decision in the master roadmap. Specify how failed transcript, report, debug-artifact, and standard reporter writes influence the process outcome. The existing visibility rules and prohibition on a successful completion summary after required-output failure remain selected.

Recommendation: required transcript and enabled ordinary-report failures fail the invocation. Optional debug-artifact failures remain nonfatal and use the standard reporting path with existing redaction and visibility rules. Standard CommandKit reporter failures follow native behavior rather than an Audita-owned replacement policy. This preserves the distinction between delivering the requested product and retaining supplemental diagnostic evidence, while avoiding a second reporting implementation. Validate the exact adopted reporter behavior and cover early and late output failures, including a report failure after the transcript has already been written.

Alternative: also make debug-artifact failures fatal when debug capture was explicitly requested. This treats capture as a required deliverable and makes incomplete evidence visible in the process outcome, but can fail an otherwise successful transcript run solely because supplemental evidence could not be saved. Standard reporter behavior would still remain upstream-owned. Choose the artifact requirement deliberately rather than infer it from the debug reporting mode, which remains independent of capture.