/edikt:guideline:compile

Generate or regenerate the co-located <guideline>.edikt.yaml sidecar for a guideline.

Reads the ## Rules section of each guideline and produces MUST/NEVER directives with reminders and verification checklist items. Uses the v0.6.0 sidecar schema — directives live in the sibling sidecar, never in the prose body. Staleness is recomputed on read against the prose body; no committed hash.

Usage

/edikt:guideline:compile                      # all guidelines
/edikt:guideline:compile error-handling       # single guideline by slug
/edikt:guideline:compile --regenerate         # force fresh generation

Arguments

Argument	Description
(none)	Process all guidelines
{slug}	Process a single guideline
--regenerate	Force regeneration regardless of hash match
--strategy=regenerate	Headless: discard hand-edits, rewrite from body
--strategy=preserve	Headless: skip files with hand-edits

How it works

1. Reads each guideline's ## Rules section.
2. Each MUST/NEVER bullet becomes a directive.
3. Soft language ("should", "prefer", "try to") is rejected with a warning.
4. Generates reminders: (pre-action interrupts) and verification: (checklist items).
5. Writes the canonical sidecar at {guideline}.edikt.yaml (siblings the prose).

# docs/guidelines/api-design.edikt.yaml
schema_version: 2
topic: api-design
path: api-design.md
signals: [http, handler, json]
directives:
  - text: "Every HTTP handler MUST return Content-Type: application/json (ref: api-design)"
    source_excerpts:
      - line_start: 12
        line_end: 12
        quote: "Every HTTP handler MUST return Content-Type: application/json on success and error."
reminders:
  - "Before writing a handler response → MUST set Content-Type (ref: api-design)"
verification:
  - "[ ] Every handler sets Content-Type: application/json (ref: api-design)"
manual_directives: []
suppressed_directives: []

Soft language rejection

Guidelines that use hedging language are skipped:

⚠ Skipped soft rule in api-design.md: "Responses should be consistent"
  Guidelines should use MUST/NEVER. Either rewrite the rule or omit it.

Sidecar regeneration

:compile regenerates exactly one <guideline>.edikt.yaml sidecar in a fresh subagent context. For a single target:

✅ error-handling.edikt.yaml — regenerated

For an all-targets run:

  ✅ error-handling — regenerated
  ✅ http-handlers — unchanged
  ...

  1 regenerated, 1 unchanged.

The agent prompt is locked; each artifact compiles in its own forked subagent (context: fork) so there is no cross-artifact contamination. Byte-equal regeneration on an unchanged body is the goal, but unlike ADR/invariant compile — where the canonical serializer has shipped — guideline compile's canonical form is still approximate, so "unchanged" isn't yet a hard guarantee here.

You usually don't need to run this directly. /edikt:gov:compile Phase A auto-resyncs stale sidecars by dispatching this command per guideline.

See Sidecar Architecture for the full schema and legacy → v0.6.0 transition.

Related commands

• /edikt:guideline:new — create a new guideline (creates the sidecar atomically)
• /edikt:guideline:review — review language quality + cross-check sidecar drift
• /edikt:gov:compile — full governance compile (Phase A resync + Phase B merge)
• Sidecar Architecture — what sidecars are and why
• Guidelines — what guidelines are and when to use them