---
title: SCOPE.md — Reference
---

# SCOPE.md — Reference

SCOPE.md is a lightweight, strategic orientation artifact placed at the root of
every registered repository. It helps humans and agents quickly understand what
a repo is about, when it is relevant, and where it fits in the ecosystem.

---

## What SCOPE.md is

SCOPE.md answers these questions **in under 60 seconds**:

- What is this repository for?
- Should I care about it right now?
- When is it relevant to my work?
- Where does it fit in the ecosystem?
- Is it mature enough to trust or reuse?
- Does it overlap with something else?

It is **not** a README, not architecture documentation, and not marketing text.
It is a pragmatic, scannable boundary definition.

---

## Template structure

Every SCOPE.md follows an 11-section template:

| Section | Purpose |
|---------|---------|
| **One-liner** | One precise sentence describing the repo's purpose |
| **Core Idea** | Main capability and what problem it solves |
| **In Scope** | What the repo is explicitly responsible for — concrete, not vague |
| **Out of Scope** | What it deliberately does NOT do (often more important) |
| **Relevant When** | Real usage scenarios when someone should consider this repo |
| **Not Relevant When** | When someone should look elsewhere |
| **Current State** | Maturity indicators: status, implementation, stability, usage |
| **How It Fits** | Upstream dependencies, downstream consumers, often-used-with |
| **Terminology** | Domain terms, potential confusions with similar concepts |
| **Related / Overlapping** | Repos with similar or adjacent responsibilities |
| **Provided Capabilities** | What this repo's domain can provide to others on request |
| **Getting Oriented** | Entry points, key files, where to start |

The template is at `state-hub/scripts/project_rules/scope.template`.

---

## Current State indicators

The Current State section uses four axes:

| Axis | Values |
|------|--------|
| **Status** | concept / experimental / active / stable / deprecated |
| **Implementation** | idea / partial / substantial / complete |
| **Stability** | unstable / evolving / stable |
| **Usage** | none / personal / internal / production |

These help an agent decide whether to depend on, extend, or avoid a repo
without needing to read its full codebase.

---

## Design principles

- **Intentionally short and scannable** — not comprehensive documentation
- **Pragmatic** — real usage scenarios, not ideals
- **Easy to maintain** — update when scope changes, not on every commit
- **Direct language** — no filler, no marketing, no invented features
- **Honest about gaps** — if something is incomplete or unstable, say so

**Anti-goals:**
- No long prose or verbose explanations
- No repetition of README content
- No hiding ambiguity behind vague language
- No assumption of production readiness

---

## How SCOPE.md is created

### New repositories

When a repo is registered via `make register-project`, the scaffold copies
`scope.template` → `SCOPE.md` at the repo root. The human or an agent then
populates the sections from the repo's actual state.

### Existing repositories

The **scope-analyst** kaizen agent persona can be loaded to generate or refine
a SCOPE.md:

```
get_kaizen_agent("scope-analyst")
```

This agent reads the repo's codebase, existing documentation, and CLAUDE.md
to produce a SCOPE.md that accurately reflects the current state.

---

## Ecosystem coverage

SCOPE.md files exist across all custodian domains:

| Domain | Repos with SCOPE.md |
|--------|-------------------|
| **custodian** | the-custodian, kaizen-agentic, ops-bridge, activity-core |
| **custodian** (netkingdom) | net-kingdom, key-cape |
| **railiance** | railiance-apps, railiance-cluster, railiance-enablement, railiance-infra, railiance-platform |
| **markitect** | markitect_project |

---

## Provided Capabilities section

The `## Provided Capabilities` section uses fenced `capability` blocks that
are machine-readable and ingested into the state-hub capability catalog:

````markdown
```capability
type: infrastructure
title: Cluster provisioning
description: Provision k8s clusters and managed instances for any domain.
keywords: [cluster, k8s, privacy, instance]
```
````

| Field | Required | Purpose |
|-------|----------|---------|
| **type** | yes | Category: `infrastructure`, `api`, `data`, `security`, `documentation`, `other` |
| **title** | yes | Short name (unique within domain + type) |
| **description** | no | What this capability provides |
| **keywords** | no | Routing hints for auto-matching capability requests |

The ingest script (`make ingest-capabilities-all`) parses these blocks from all
registered repos and populates the state-hub catalog table. This follows
ADR-001: **files are the origin of truth, DB is cache/index**.

---

## Relation to capabilities

SCOPE.md is both the **human-readable boundary definition** and the **origin of
truth for the capability catalog**:

| | SCOPE.md | Capability Catalog (DB) |
|-|----------|------------------------|
| **Role** | Origin of truth | Derived index |
| **Granularity** | Per-repository | Per-domain (aggregated from repo files) |
| **Purpose** | "What is this repo?" + "What can it provide?" | Routing engine for capability requests |
| **Updates** | Edit the file, re-ingest | Auto-populated from SCOPE.md |
| **Readable without hub** | Yes — just open the file | No — requires API |

This means a repo is fully self-describing: you can understand what it provides
by reading SCOPE.md alone, without any centralized infrastructure.

---

## Relation to other concepts

| Concept | Relationship |
|---------|-------------|
| **CLAUDE.md** | Build/test/lint instructions — *how* to work with the repo |
| **SCOPE.md** | Boundary definition — *what* the repo is and isn't |
| **Capability Catalog** | Operational routing — *what the domain can provide* on request |
| **Domain Goals** | Strategic direction — *where the domain is heading* |
| **Project Charters** | Founding intent — *why the domain exists* (in `canon/projects/`) |

---

*SCOPE.md is the boundary definition layer. It tells you whether you are in the
right place before you start reading code.*
