Workflow Design Manual

Use Fast Lane as the default planning policy for scoped DevKit work. Record the scope, ambiguity, risk, independent write count, verification cost, blocker, and available capacity before choosing a lane.

For a newly opened project that has no known workspace id or first index snapshot, initialize the local index before deciding that the plugin is degraded: call project_index_register once with the current canonical project root, then call project_index_sync once with the returned opaque workspace id. A successful first snapshot is normal cold start, even when the project already contains source, README, or configuration files. Do not call project_index_status before the first sync and do not report DEGRADED_SKILL_ONLY merely because a new project did not already have an index. Degrade only when the MCP tool is unavailable or register/sync fails; preserve that failure as evidence and do not guess an index identity.

• Keep writers disjoint; prewarm and audit roles are read-only.
• Treat compiler-selected model, effort, worktree, lease, and context as host-owned facts rather than prose suggestions.
• Refill only after validated terminal evidence; a disconnect or stale context is not completion.
• Keep temporary files and worktrees inside the approved task root.

This is a planning manual. The bounded compiler and MCP lifecycle contracts are documented in `mcp-tools/devkit_fastlane/`.