migrate
migrate helps you add govctl governance to an established project by examining existing evidence—documentation, code structure, VCS history, and configuration—to recover consequential decisions and specifications. It guides you through a discovery phase, presents candidates for backfill as Architecture Decision Records, RFCs, or Work Items, and executes only authorized changes in small coherent batches. The workflow preserves traceability, respects existing artifact state, and stops when evidence conflicts or authorization is unclear.
migrate adopts govctl governance in existing projects by discovering and confirming historical decisions before backfilling a baseline.
AI-generated summary based on this skill's SKILL.md
Decision gist · record as of 2026-07-27
migrate adopts govctl governance in existing projects by discovering and confirming historical decisions before backfilling a baseline. migrate helps you add govctl governance to an established project by examining existing evidence—documentation, code structure, VCS history, and configuration—to recover consequential decisions and specifications. It guides you through a discovery phase, presents candidates for backfill as Architecture Decision Records, RFCs, or Work Items, and executes only authorized changes in small coherent batches. The workflow preserves traceability, respects existing artifact state, and stops when evidence conflicts or authorization is unclear.
Use it when
- Yes.
- migrate's discovery process examines your codebase to recover durable governance decisions from code, docs, and VCS evidence.
Verify before relying
Read SKILL.md below before installing (1 file). Open directory: indexed for reading, not audited.
Install
govctl-org/govctl/migrate · repository language: Rust
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Frequently asked questions
AI-generated answers based on this skill's SKILL.md and metadata
How do I adopt govctl in a brownfield codebase?
migrate helps you add govctl governance to an established project by examining existing evidence—documentation, code structure, VCS history, and configuration—to recover consequential decisions and specifications. It guides you through a discovery phase, presents candidates for backfill as Architecture Decision Records, RFCs, or Work Items, and executes only authorized changes in small coherent batches.
Can migrate backfill governance in an existing repo without rewriting history?
Yes. migrate is designed to adopt govctl governance in an existing project without rewriting history. It preserves traceability, respects existing artifact state, and stops when evidence conflicts or authorization is unclear, allowing you to incrementally migrate to govctl while preserving product behavior.
What does the govctl migration discovery process involve?
migrate's discovery process examines your codebase to recover durable governance decisions from code, docs, and VCS evidence. It identifies architectural patterns, specifications, and consequential choices already embedded in your project, then surfaces them as candidates for formalization as ADRs, RFCs, or work items.
How does migrate handle incremental govctl adoption?
migrate executes changes in small coherent batches, allowing you to adopt govctl gradually. Each batch is authorized separately, and the workflow stops when evidence conflicts or authorization is unclear, giving you full control over the pace and scope of your governance adoption.
Can migrate recover governance decisions from legacy code?
Yes. migrate discovers and backfills architectural decisions and specifications from legacy code by analyzing existing evidence across documentation, code structure, version control history, and configuration. This lets you set up ADRs, RFCs, and work items for an established codebase without starting from scratch.
What license does migrate use?
migrate is released under the MIT license, allowing free use, modification, and distribution in both open-source and commercial projects.
SKILL.md
Rendered from the published skill. Quoted content, verbatim.
Brownfield Migration
Adopt govctl incrementally in an existing codebase according to [[ADR-0032]]. Recover durable governance from available evidence without rewriting history, inventing rationale, or changing product behavior.
This is a historical backfill workflow. Use gov for implementation,
discuss for unresolved design, init for installation and scaffolding policy,
and commit for VCS operations.
Operational Baseline
Discovery
Check for gov/config.toml before running resource discovery. Its absence means
the repository is not initialized; use the init skill when the adoption
request authorizes scaffolding, or confirm that step with the user first.
When the config exists, establish what was previously migrated:
```bash govctl status govctl search <topic> govctl adr list govctl rfc list govctl work list active govctl work
(truncated - see the full file via the links below)
File tree — 1 file
.claude/skills/migrate/SKILL.md
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Related skills
discuss guides you through governance design conversations grounded in your repository's existing context. It helps identify constraints, compare design options, and produce durable artifacts like RFCs and ADRs that capture decisions and obligations without moving into implementation.
RFC Writer guides you through composing normative RFCs—product contracts with observable obligations, invariants, and compatibility rules. It enforces separation between specification prose and implementation details, ensures each clause is independently testable, and hands off lifecycle operations to dedicated governance tools. Use it to author the contract itself, not design rationale or execution scope.
commit creates a coherent, single-outcome VCS change while enforcing governance rules and linking to active work items. It detects your repository type (Jujutsu or Git), validates against govctl policies, and ensures unrelated changes stay separate. The skill handles traceability, commit message formatting, and post-commit verification in one workflow.
ADR Writer guides you through documenting architectural decisions by establishing the problem context, weighing real alternatives, explaining why one direction won, and recording both benefits and costs. It enforces boundaries between decision rationale and product obligations, keeping ADRs focused on justification rather than execution or RFC-level commitments.
Decision Analysis exposes assumptions, failure paths, and success conditions for high-stakes design choices. It uses premortem and backcast reasoning to rank options against constraints, reversibility, and evidence quality, then returns a risk-calibrated recommendation. The skill routes obligations and rationale to their authoritative destinations—RFC, ADR, Work Item, or verification—rather than creating artifacts itself.
gov delivers substantive code changes within your repository's governance framework, enforcing RFC and ADR authority while maintaining work-item traceability. It establishes current state, validates against normative specifications, and ensures completion evidence before closure.
More skills detach (MIT) · migrate-oxfmt (MIT) · adr-backfill (MIT) · project-adopt (MIT)