touchstone

Touchstone establishes a baseline for solo developers directing multiple AI agents across GitHub projects. It delivers two core components: guidance prompts that instruct agents on workflow standards (branching first, single-concern commits, mandatory finding resolution, and gate compliance), and push tooling (a CLI enforcing correct GitHub usage patterns. The system standardizes development flow through set-and-forget adoption, where repositories remain correct without further intervention. The CLI validates declared project checks, verifies tracker claims, applies GitHub policy, and provides four bounded PR operations (open, status, merge, answer). It explicitly does not stage, commit, or push code, and never replaces GitHub's merge decision. Every operation includes documented raw git/gh recovery paths. Touchstone operates on three principles: constraining delivery to the default branch via GitHub rules (rejecting direct/forced/unreviewed pushes), making state legible through native GitHub surfaces (git, PRs, issues), and maintaining consistent rules across all projects and agents. A key operating rule requires enforcement to occur at the layer that can actually enforce it (GitHub handles rulesets/required checks, while scripts only observe and sequence). The merge gate implements an exact-head verdict system: the review-gate workflow succeeds only for a trusted clean verdict bound to the current PR head. Installation occurs via Homebrew (macOS) or platform-agnostic release scripts. Adoption involves declaring project facts and applying audited GitHub policy through documented commands.