The loop

The developer surface is three verbs. Credo got the shape right: one iterative command you run until it comes back quiet, identical locally and in CI.

$ mix cohere.design deal-reversals --contexts deals   # START
$ mix cohere.check                                    # CHECK: anytime
$ mix cohere.complete deal-reversals                  # COMPLETE

Start

mix cohere.design deal-reversals --contexts deals scaffolds cohere/design/deal-reversals.md with status: draft and assembles its Existing ground: each anchored context's current API from the map, plus the invariants and decisions from its intent card, dated. Omit --contexts on a branch and the anchors are inferred from the diff, the same way mix cohere.packet --diff resolves them.

A no-LLM tool can't judge that your design contradicts INV-DEA-002. It does something better suited to a deterministic tool: it delivers INV-DEA-002 onto the page where you're designing, where a contradiction is hard to miss.

Check

Every finding comes with the action that fixes it. Hard findings exit 1: a stale map, a drifted card, a dead card reference. Design findings are advisories and never fail the build; an accepted design is a dated record, and drift on history is information, not a bug.

$ mix cohere.check
✗ cohere/intent/deals.md
  surface drifted: +approve_deal/1
  → re-review the card, then `mix cohere.check --accept deals`
⚠ cohere/design/deal-reversals.md — draft, advisory only
  anchor "Reversals" not in the map — fine if this design introduces it
drift detected

A drifted card means: re-read it against the new surface, update what your change invalidated, then accept. Accepting always leaves a dated trace in the card, attributed to whoever judged (--by, defaulting to git user.name) — in a repo where agents accept their own drift, the trace says so. Accepted drift is documented drift, and the failure mode this loop exists to kill is the silent kind.

$ mix cohere.check --accept deals --by greg
cohere/intent/deals.md — rebound to surface df8be63a83b8, drift annotated

Complete

mix cohere.complete deal-reversals is the land step, one command:

1. Regenerate the map. Mechanical, so it just runs.
2. Require the check hard-clean, which forces the card re-review where the design's durable decisions get distilled into cards.
3. Verify every backticked ref in the design's Promised surface exists in the compiled app. A design that promised reverse_deal/1 cannot complete until reverse_deal/1 exists.
4. Flip draft → accepted, dated, and log it.

The PR that lands the feature carries the map delta (the ontology change), the card delta (the intent change), the accepted design (the why), and the code, all reviewable together.

After acceptance

Accepted designs are immutable. New thinking later is a new design naming the old one in its supersedes: frontmatter; history is superseded, never rewritten. Cards are the living constraints; designs are the conversation record. Two living truths about the same intent always diverge, so cohere keeps exactly one.