`scripts/spec/`

The spec engine's runtime: the shared scripts and templates the /spec-* skills invoke. It is vendored rather than depended on, and it carries its own MIT licence at scripts/spec/LICENSE.

What it is for

The skills are the interface; this is the machinery behind them - the gate that decides whether a spec may proceed, the setup that creates a spec's working files, and the templates those files are written from.

Keeping it separate from scripts/ proper matters for one reason: everything else in scripts/ is this standard's own work and its own licence. This is somebody else's, adapted, and that boundary has to be visible rather than remembered.

What does not go in here

Your own scripts. They live in scripts/. A local edit inside this folder is a fork of the engine that the next update has to merge.

Changes that should be patches upstream. Where this standard deliberately diverges from the engine it came from, the divergence is marked in place with a PATCHED comment saying what was changed and why - so the next person can tell an intentional difference from an accident.

Decisions behind it

ADR-015 - the engine is extracted and vendored, not installed. A dependency would mean a version to track, a registry to reach, and a tool that can break the loop remotely.
Attribution stays with the code. The licence file lives beside what it covers rather than in a repository-wide notice, so copying the folder carries its terms with it.

Reference

Status. Required - part of the core profile.
How it arrives. copy - ship verbatim; the repo gets a byte-for-byte copy (guards, templates that carry no repo-specific content)
Shipped form. read it in the standard's own tree

The rule that requires it

The lifecycle procedures - the spec loop, backlog capture, pre-PR

See it in the spec

What checks it

node scripts/spec-structure.mjs --block - spec files are where and shaped as the standard requires Blocks the build when it fails.
node scripts/spec-guard.mjs --block - domain code changed without touching its spec fails CI Blocks the build when it fails.