ADR 0023: Rename and promote the workflow commands

Vocabulary amendment: Current pointers use finish → done, graduate → accept, the retired product-category wording → discern, the gate, or the bar; the decision and reasoning are unchanged.

Status: accepted

With discern renamed to discern, three run-time verbs no longer read as well as the public CLI deserves:

• tidy is the fast inner loop (the fix stage, then the read-only checks). "Tidy" reads as an optional cleanup, not as the thing you run before the full gate. The mental model is "get the change ready, then prove it done."
• worktree exit accepts a worktree's branch back to the main checkout for review. It is one of the most frequent actions in the workflow, yet it was buried in the worktree namespace beside the rarely-typed plumbing (teardown, prune, ensure) — and "exit" undersells it (you are not exiting, you are promoting finished work).
• guidelines compiles the agent files and materializes skills, and is meant to grow into a broader "regenerate the generated agent/integration surface" command. "Guidelines" names only one of its jobs and boxes it in.

The window is the same one ADR 0022 used: pre-release, one self-hosting consumer, no published binaries. Renaming verbs is cheapest now.

Rename the three verbs — and promote one out of its namespace — as a hard rename with no aliases.

• tidy → prepare. Behaviour is unchanged: run the fix-stage commands, then the check-stage commands; never build or test. The name states intent — discern prepare readies a change; discern done proves it done.
• worktree exit → accept (promoted to top-level). Behaviour, safety checks, and reporting are unchanged. It moves from the worktree group to a first-class discern accept, because landing accepted work for review is a primary action in the workflow, not worktree plumbing. The lower-level worktree management stays namespaced (worktree teardown, worktree prune, worktree ensure, bare worktree, identity).
• guidelines → refresh. Behaviour is unchanged for now (compile the built-in guidance plus [guidance].sources into the agent files, and materialize/link the effective skill set). The broader name leaves room to refresh a wider integration surface later. The [guidance] config section and the guidance-compilation model are deliberately not renamed — this is a command and user-facing-language change, not a model change.
• Hard rename, no shim. The binary recognises only the new verbs; the old ones are gone (the same reasoning as ADR 0022: no install base to support, and an alias is the dual-spelling debt the single-source-of-truth discipline exists to avoid).

The canonical workflow now reads:

discern setup
discern setup
discern prepare    # fast inner loop: fixers + checks, no build/test
discern done       # full definition-of-done gate
discern accept     # land the isolated worktree branch for review
discern refresh    # refresh generated agent files, skills, integration artifacts

• Internal symbols followed the user-facing rename where they named the command: runTidy → runPrepare (and gate/tidy.ts → gate/prepare.ts), and worktreeExit → accept. The guidance compiler kept its name (compileGuidelines, guidelines.ts, GuidelinesResult) because it is bound to the unchanged [guidance] model, not to the old command spelling — only its user-facing strings (the generated-file banner, the run summary) now say refresh.
• The promotion changed the command surface: the worktree group no longer lists exit, and accept is a top-level verb gated on the worktrees feature. The engine smoke test asserts the promotion (top-level accept, group still surfacing its colon sub-verbs).
• No migration step ships. The rename touches verbs, not the config schema, so [meta].schema_version is unchanged. A downstream project adapts by getting the new binary and updating its own references; the worktree git hooks call worktree / worktree ensure / worktree teardown — none renamed — so hooks are unaffected.
• Historical ADRs keep their point-in-time verb names (e.g. an ADR describing the cutover-era tidy/guidelines); this ADR is the record of the change, exactly as ADR 0022 handled the project rename.

• Keep aliases for the old verbs. Rejected: pre-release there is nothing to keep compatible, and a permanent alias for every verb is the dual-spelling debt ADR 0022 already argued against.
• Leave worktree exit namespaced (rename only). Rejected: graduating is a primary, frequent action; keeping it beside the plumbing kept underselling the common path. Promotion makes "done, then accept" read as the workflow it is.
• Rename the [guidance] model and compileGuidelines too. Rejected for now: the command broadens, but the guidance model is stable and the compiler is a cross-module contract; churning it would cost more than it teaches. refresh can absorb more jobs without the model changing.