Decisions: capture, review, govern

Decisions in repowise are linked to graph nodes, surfaced via get_why, and tracked for staleness as code evolves.

There are two kinds of record and the difference matters. A candidate is something capture extracted: from a commit message, an ADR file, a WHY:/DECISION: marker, a PR body, an agent transcript. A candidate governs nothing. A decision is a candidate a person accepted with repowise decision confirm. Acceptance is the only thing that turns one into the other; extraction, recurrence and confidence all stop at the candidate.

repowise decision candidates          # the review queue
repowise decision confirm 9f3c --reason "..." --scope src/api
repowise decision list                # what governs

Reviewing#

repowise decision candidates#

List records awaiting review. Acceptable candidates come first, so the top of the list is work you can finish in one pass. The rest name what has to be filled in before confirm will take them.

repowise decision candidates [PATH] [OPTIONS]

The Acceptable column is either yes or the same blockers confirm would refuse with. Under --format json each row carries a blockers array.

repowise decision confirm#

Accept candidates. This is the event that makes them govern.

repowise decision confirm DECISION_ID... [PATH] [OPTIONS]

Acceptance is refused rather than stored blank. A candidate needs a reason, a scope and an evidence reference; the three flags supply whatever is missing, and correcting them here corrects the record. Under --format json the refusal is a document ({"error": "acceptance_refused", "blockers": [...]}) and the exit code is 1, so a scripted review can tell a refusal apart from a crash.

confirm takes one id or many, with the optional repository path still last. Ids may be the 8-character prefixes decision list prints, as long as the prefix is unique. Each id is applied independently: a batch that refuses one commits the rest and exits 1. --preview puts every id through the same acceptance contract and then rolls the whole run back, so what it reports is what the write would have said.

repowise decision confirm 9f3c --reason "Postgres is the only store with the extension"
repowise decision confirm 9f3c 2b70 a114 --preview
repowise decision confirm 9f3c --scope packages/server --evidence 5a50232

One id emits the transition document those verbs always emitted ({"id", "status", "action"}). Two or more, or --preview, emit a results document with a results array plus succeeded and failed counts.

repowise decision dismiss#

Tombstone candidates. They are kept as tombstones and never re-proposed, so a reindex will not bring them back.

repowise decision dismiss DECISION_ID... [PATH] [OPTIONS]

Like confirm, it takes one id or many. --format json is non-interactive by construction and skips the prompt, since a scripted dismissal would otherwise read EOF and abort.

repowise decision merge#

Fold a candidate into an existing decision instead of accepting a duplicate. The retired id keeps resolving through an alias, so anything that wrote it down still works.

repowise decision merge DECISION_ID INTO_ID [PATH]

repowise decision split#

Flag a candidate as bundling two choices. It never splits it for you; it marks the record so a reviewer knows why it is stuck.

repowise decision split DECISION_ID [PATH] [--reason TEXT]

repowise decision status#

Report what decision capture did on the last run, and what it cost.

repowise decision status [PATH]

Reading and writing records#

repowise decision add#

Add a decision yourself, interactively or from flags. Prompts for title, context, decision, rationale, alternatives, consequences, affected files, and tags when the flags are absent.

repowise decision add [PATH] [OPTIONS]

repowise decision list#

List decision records. By default shows everything; flags filter the view.

repowise decision list [PATH] [OPTIONS]

repowise decision list
repowise decision list --status active
repowise decision list --stale-only

repowise decision show#

Show full details of one decision. Accepts a unique id prefix.

repowise decision show DECISION_ID [PATH]

repowise decision deprecate#

Retire a decision, optionally naming the one that replaces it. --superseded-by writes an explicit lineage edge and keeps the retired id resolving.

repowise decision deprecate DECISION_ID [PATH] [OPTIONS]

repowise decision health#

The dashboard view: stale decisions, candidates awaiting review, ungoverned hotspots.

repowise decision health [PATH]

The manifest#

Accepted decisions can live in a tracked file, .repowise/decisions.yaml, so they travel with the repo rather than with one machine's index.

repowise decision export#

Write accepted decisions to .repowise/decisions.yaml.

repowise decision export [PATH] [--force]

It refuses to write an empty file over a committed non-empty one. Deleting the index is a documented recovery step and must not delete the decisions along with the cache. Import them first, or pass --force.

repowise decision import#

Reconcile the store to .repowise/decisions.yaml.

repowise decision import [PATH] [--dry-run]

The file wins: it is what a colleague's commit changes, and the store is the copy. Entries missing a reason or a scope are skipped rather than guessed at.

repowise decision migrate#

Classify legacy rows written before candidates and decisions were separate. Dry run unless you pass --apply.

repowise decision migrate [PATH] [--apply] [--limit N]

Records promoted by recurrence rather than by a person become candidates. That is a visible loss of standing decisions, and it is the intended outcome: they were never accepted. Nothing is deleted, every id keeps resolving, and re-running changes nothing. --limit (default 10) caps how many reasons the report lists.

Capture policy#

Which sources run, and whether any of them may call a model. These write the decisions: block in .repowise/config.yaml; see Configuration for the schema. Every mutating command takes --dry-run, and writes preserve every unrelated key in the file.

repowise decision config#

repowise decision config show [PATH]
repowise decision config preset NAME [PATH] [--dry-run]
repowise decision config discovery [PATH] [OPTIONS]

preset takes one of default, off, local_only, balanced, full.

discovery sets the per-update budget for the one broad session-discovery call. With neither budget flag it just prints the resolved policy.

repowise decision source#

repowise decision source list [PATH]
repowise decision source set SOURCE [PATH] --on | --off
repowise decision source set SOURCE [PATH] --llm | --no-llm

source list prints every source with its capabilities and current state. source set needs at least one of the two switch pairs. --no-llm keeps a source's deterministic parse and skips its model stage, which only means something for a source that has both (inline_marker, adr, session).

The switchable sources are inline_marker, git_archaeology, adr, pr, comment, session, session_discovery and conventions. Manual entry (cli) is an authority route rather than machine capture, so it has nothing to switch off.

repowise decision llm#

repowise decision llm --on | --off [PATH] [--dry-run]

The master switch for decision-extraction model calls. Off is a complete mode, not a degraded one: deterministic capture, transcript ingestion and manual decisions all keep working, and already-accepted decisions keep governing.