The CDAL Loop Cycle

Every change under CDAL progresses through a structured 7-stage lifecycle:

PLAN ──► CONTRACT ──► RED ──► GREEN ──► VERIFY ──► REVIEW ──► INTEGRATE

1. PLAN

• Actor: spec-analyst
• Output: Work Order in docs/workorders/ with explicit requirement IDs (REQ-*) and acceptance criteria.
• Rule: No code is written until requirements have unique IDs.

2. CONTRACT

• Actor: contract-steward
• Action: Open contract window (cdal window open <WO-ID>).
• Output: Invariants and domain models codified in contracts/*.contract.mjs.
• Validation: cdal validate --strict && cdal codegen.

3. RED

• Actor: test-author
• Output: Automated failing test suites in test/*.test.ts.
• Rule: Every test must be annotated with // @REQ: <ID>. Tests must fail before implementation starts.

4. GREEN

• Actor: implementer
• Constraint: Strictly forbidden from modifying tests (denyTests: true). Maximum 3 iterative retry attempts to pass tests.
• Rule: Write the minimum production code needed to satisfy the failing tests.

5. VERIFY

• Actor: Deterministic Verification Pipeline (cdal verify)
• Automated Steps:
  1. cdal validate --strict
  2. cdal codegen --check
  3. pnpm typecheck
  4. pnpm lint
  5. pnpm test
  6. cdal trace --enforce
  7. cdal selftest

6. REVIEW

• Actor: reviewer
• Checklist: Audit zero test edits, zero forbidden pattern evasion, zero spec drift, 100% trace coverage.

7. INTEGRATE

• Action: Squash-merge PR to main and delete the feature branch.