/bootstrap
Scaffold or retrofit documentation-led conventions (AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md, CONVENTIONS.md, ADR catalogue, plan/ queue, _agent/ coordination) into a repo. Use when the user asks to "set up conventions", "bootstrap ADRs", "scaffold the documentation-led layout", or "add AGENTS.md
Claude Code
$ npx -y skills add EvolveHQ/docflow --skill bootstrap --agent claude-code
Codex
$ npx skills add EvolveHQ/docflow --skill bootstrap -a codex -y
Cursor
$ npx skills add EvolveHQ/docflow --skill bootstrap -a cursor -y
Gemini CLI
$ npx skills add EvolveHQ/docflow --skill bootstrap -a gemini-cli -y
GitHub Copilot
$ npx skills add EvolveHQ/docflow --skill bootstrap -a github-copilot -y
OpenCode
$ npx skills add EvolveHQ/docflow --skill bootstrap -a opencode -y
Windsurf
$ npx skills add EvolveHQ/docflow --skill bootstrap -a windsurf -y
SKILL.md
bootstrap.SKILL.mdname: bootstrap
description: Scaffold or retrofit documentation-led conventions (AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md, CONVENTIONS.md, ADR catalogue, plan/ queue, _agent/ coordination) into a repo. Use when the user asks to "set up conventions", "bootstrap ADRs", "scaffold the documentation-led layout", or "add AGENTS.md and a plan queue". Works on fresh repos and existing ones — preserves existing content and merges rather than overwrites. Opens with an express / guided / full depth choice, so a quick conservative setup needs almost no questions.
bootstrap
You are installing (or retrofitting) a documentation-led convention set in the current repo. The end state is a repo that can be driven by both humans and coding agents off a small set of canonical files. Carry over the *mechanism* described here — nothing about any other project.
Step 1 — Detect the situation
Inspect the repo before asking anything. Reuse explicit answers and sign-off already supplied in this session; never replace them with profile defaults or ask for them again. Before writing, summarise the resolved artefact root, depth, queue, gate and coordination/integration modes against those answers. If a host mirrors a selected folder into a sandbox, identify the actual target path and how verified outputs reach the selected folder; never call an untouched target complete merely because a scratch mirror passed.
- **Fresh repo** (no source, no docs): you are scaffolding from zero.
- **Existing repo**: you are retrofitting.
- Read any current `README.md`, `CONTRIBUTING.md`, `AGENTS.md`,
`CLAUDE.md`, `docs/`, `adr/`, `.github/` before proposing changes.
- Preserve existing content. Merge, don't overwrite. If existing
conventions conflict with the ones below, surface the conflict in your assessment summary.
- If ADRs already exist in another format, propose a migration plan
(renumber, keep, translate) rather than creating a parallel tree.
- **Already a docflow repo** (carries `AGENTS.md` + `CONVENTIONS.md` + an
ADR catalogue): you are **adding to an existing setup**, not scaffolding. Do **not** re-scaffold the core or re-ask settled questions — read the recorded choices from `CONVENTIONS.md`/`AGENTS.md` (ADR shape, status lifecycle, **artefact root**, multi-agent mode, and which optional layers already exist). Then offer to **enable any opted-out optional layer** still absent — `plan/`, `_agent/`, `GLOSSARY.md`, `domains/`, or the second ADR shape (the technology template) — and write only the chosen ones, by **merge**, under the recorded artefact root, leaving everything else untouched. Ask only the questions the new layers need (e.g. the coordination question when enabling `_agent/` — where a single writer without both a recorded verify gate and a plan queue correctly ends up with no `_agent/` at all, and the layer is simply not needed). This is the entry point for adding a layer you deferred at first bootstrap. A repo still carrying coordination files an earlier scaffold wrote keeps them: leave them in place here and let the audit skill report the layout.
**Enabling `GLOSSARY.md` writes the canonical shell, never a rewrite.** When the layer is chosen and the file is absent, write it from `templates/GLOSSARY.md` — the optional heading and prose, then the one `Term | Definition` table recorded in the generated `CONVENTIONS.md` §Glossary. If the file already exists, leave it untouched: enabling the layer adds nothing, and `add-convention` extends the existing file in the canonical shape or `audit` offers a consented migration.
**Enabling the second ADR shape is a scheme switch, not a file copy.** It is the one deferred layer that changes a choice already recorded, so write all of it in one pass or none of it: replace §ADR Shapes in `CONVENTIONS.md` with the two-shape text, add the technology section-order and shape bullets to `AGENTS.md`, write `adr/0000-template-technology.md`, and regenerate `INDEX.md` with the Shape column. Existing ADRs keep their numbers and stay capability — an absent `shape:` field already means capability, so no ADR is rewritten and nothing is renumbered. Half of the switch strands the repo in the state the Step 4.5 cross-check calls a contradiction: a technology template that a single-shape scheme will never select.
**A repo already on the legacy range encoding gets the migration offer instead.** Some two-shape repos were scaffolded before the shape became a declared field and encode it in the **number**: §ADR Shapes records a cutoff (capability below it, technology at or above), and `adr/` holds a template numbered other than `0000` (e.g. `adr/0100-template.md`). Either signal alone identifies it. Such a repo is not missing a layer — it has both shapes already — so do not offer the scheme switch above, which would strand it with two rival encodings. Offer the **migration onto the declared field**, on the same terms the audit skill uses:
- Show the **old-to-new number map first**, as a dry run: capability
ADRs keep their numbers; technology ADRs take the numbers following the highest capability ADR, in their original relative order. Alongside it, list the references that follow (`depends-on`, `supersedes` / `superseded-by`, relative `adr/NNNN-*.md` links, `INDEX.md`, domain `README.md` listings, `plan/todo/` owning-ADR lines) and what is left as history (`plan/done/` footers, commit messages, tags).
- **Write nothing without an explicit confirmation of that map.**
Declining is a valid outcome: the repo keeps the range encoding and keeps passing its own rules.
- On confirmation, apply the migration exactly as the **audit** skill's
migration step specifies — renumber, stamp `shape:` on every ADR, rewrite every in-catalogue reference, replace the boundary template with `adr/0000-template-technology.md`, rewrite §ADR Shapes to the declar
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name: bootstrap description: Scaffold or retrofit documentation-led conventions (AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md, CONVENTIONS.md, ADR catalogue, plan/ queue, _agent/ coordination) into a repo. Use when the user asks to "set up conventions", "bootstrap ADRs", "scaffold the documentation-led layout", or "add AGENTS.md and a plan queue". Works on fresh repos and existing ones — preserves existing content and merges rather than overwrites. Opens with an express / guided / full depth choice, so a quick conservative setup needs almost no questions.
bootstrap
You are installing (or retrofitting) a documentation-led convention set in the current repo. The end state is a repo that can be driven by both humans and coding agents off a small set of canonical files. Carry over the *mechanism* described here — nothing about any other project.
Step 1 — Detect the situation
Inspect the repo before asking anything. Reuse explicit answers and sign-off already supplied in this session; never replace them with profile defaults or ask for them again. Before writing, summarise the resolved artefact root, depth, queue, gate and coordination/integration modes against those answers. If a host mirrors a selected folder into a sandbox, identify the actual target path and how verified outputs reach the selected folder; never call an untouched target complete merely because a scratch mirror passed.
- **Fresh repo** (no source, no docs): you are scaffolding from zero.
- **Existing repo**: you are retrofitting.
- Read any current `README.md`, `CONTRIBUTING.md`, `AGENTS.md`,
`CLAUDE.md`, `docs/`, `adr/`, `.github/` before proposing changes.
- Preserve existing content. Merge, don't overwrite. If existing
conventions conflict with the ones below, surface the conflict in your assessment summary.
- If ADRs already exist in another format, propose a migration plan
(renumber, keep, translate) rather than creating a parallel tree.
- **Already a docflow repo** (carries `AGENTS.md` + `CONVENTIONS.md` + an
ADR catalogue): you are **adding to an existing setup**, not scaffolding. Do **not** re-scaffold the core or re-ask settled questions — read the recorded choices from `CONVENTIONS.md`/`AGENTS.md` (ADR shape, status lifecycle, **artefact root**, multi-agent mode, and which optional layers already exist). Then offer to **enable any opted-out optional layer** still absent — `plan/`, `_agent/`, `GLOSSARY.md`, `domains/`, or the second ADR shape (the technology template) — and write only the chosen ones, by **merge**, under the recorded artefact root, leaving everything else untouched. Ask only the questions the new layers need (e.g. the coordination question when enabling `_agent/` — where a single writer without both a recorded verify gate and a plan queue correctly ends up with no `_agent/` at all, and the layer is simply not needed). This is the entry point for adding a layer you deferred at first bootstrap. A repo still carrying coordination files an earlier scaffold wrote keeps them: leave them in place here and let the audit skill report the layout.
**Enabling `GLOSSARY.md` writes the canonical shell, never a rewrite.** When the layer is chosen and the file is absent, write it from `templates/GLOSSARY.md` — the optional heading and prose, then the one `Term | Definition` table recorded in the generated `CONVENTIONS.md` §Glossary. If the file already exists, leave it untouched: enabling the layer adds nothing, and `add-convention` extends the existing file in the canonical shape or `audit` offers a consented migration.
**Enabling the second ADR shape is a scheme switch, not a file copy.** It is the one deferred layer that changes a choice already recorded, so write all of it in one pass or none of it: replace §ADR Shapes in `CONVENTIONS.md` with the two-shape text, add the technology section-order and shape bullets to `AGENTS.md`, write `adr/0000-template-technology.md`, and regenerate `INDEX.md` with the Shape column. Existing ADRs keep their numbers and stay capability — an absent `shape:` field already means capability, so no ADR is rewritten and nothing is renumbered. Half of the switch strands the repo in the state the Step 4.5 cross-check calls a contradiction: a technology template that a single-shape scheme will never select.
**A repo already on the legacy range encoding gets the migration offer instead.** Some two-shape repos were scaffolded before the shape became a declared field and encode it in the **number**: §ADR Shapes records a cutoff (capability below it, technology at or above), and `adr/` holds a template numbered other than `0000` (e.g. `adr/0100-template.md`). Either signal alone identifies it. Such a repo is not missing a layer — it has both shapes already — so do not offer the scheme switch above, which would strand it with two rival encodings. Offer the **migration onto the declared field**, on the same terms the audit skill uses:
- Show the **old-to-new number map first**, as a dry run: capability
ADRs keep their numbers; technology ADRs take the numbers following the highest capability ADR, in their original relative order. Alongside it, list the references that follow (`depends-on`, `supersedes` / `superseded-by`, relative `adr/NNNN-*.md` links, `INDEX.md`, domain `README.md` listings, `plan/todo/` owning-ADR lines) and what is left as history (`plan/done/` footers, commit messages, tags).
- **Write nothing without an explicit confirmation of that map.**
Declining is a valid outcome: the repo keeps the range encoding and keeps passing its own rules.
- On confirmation, apply the migration exactly as the **audit** skill's
migration step specifies — renumber, stamp `shape:` on every ADR, rewrite every in-catalogue reference, replace the boundary template with `adr/0000-template-technology.md`, rewrite §ADR Shapes to the declar
New to Docflow? Start here explains the terms, helps you choose one repository or several, and shows setup for your coding agent. Follow the prompt-first guides for a first task and expected result.
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Questions about bootstrap.
- Which coding agents can use bootstrap?
- bootstrap installs in Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot, OpenCode and Windsurf with the skills CLI, using each agent's flag shown on this page. Flowy's auto-invocation, which fires a skill when your prompt matches, runs in Claude Code only.

