Reconcile & drift

The status a project claims is only worth trusting if something checks it against reality. reconcile is that something: it recomputes state from a census of the files and reports where the claim and the files disagree.

What drifts

• Index rows - an artefact with no index row, or a row pointing at a file that no longer exists.
• Status mismatches - an index row that says Open while the file says Fixed.
• Counts - an epic’s “3/5 stories done” checkbox that no longer matches its children.

/sdlc-studio reconcile              # detect: read-only, reports drift
/sdlc-studio reconcile apply        # fix the mechanical drift
/sdlc-studio reconcile --verify     # also run the executable Verify: lines

detect writes nothing; apply fixes the mechanical drift; the index is derived, never hand-authored.

Why derived beats asserted

A spec-driven tool writes the status down and trusts the agent to keep it current. A week and ten changes later, the documents and the code have quietly diverged and nothing noticed. Reconciliation removes the trust: the count is recomputed from the files every time, and a pre-commit gate refuses a commit whose counts, index or status do not match - naming the exact drift and the fix.

Note

This is the difference between aligning the agent on intent and arguing back with facts. Claim a count and reconcile recomputes it. Let a document drift from the code and the gate stops you.

See also

• Executable acceptance criteria - reconcile --verify runs them.
• Mutation testing - proving those tests can fail.