speckit-constitution

To establish project governance from day one, draft a project constitution at .specify/memory/constitution.md to define non-negotiable rules, versioning policies, and amendment procedures that guide all development work.

A project constitution is a governance document capturing coding standards and architectural constraints. It manages versioning by applying semantic rules to track changes and propagate updates to dependent artifacts across the project.

You maintain project guidelines by using defined amendment procedures within the constitution. Changes are versioned semantically and propagated to dependent artifacts, ensuring consistent practices and reducing ambiguity across teams.

You should initialize a specification document at project initiation to align stakeholders. Setting governance principles and coding standards early prevents ambiguity and enforces consistent practices throughout the development lifecycle.

Yes, you can apply a provided template to draft architectural constraints and decision logs. The constitution ensures that placeholders align with the template structure to capture project-wide constraints accurately.

The best way to enforce consistent practices is to establish a central constitution capturing governance principles and coding standards. This repeatable mechanism reduces ambiguity and aligns team efforts from the project start.