Build

Build adds a new capability: frame the change, plan it, implement it, verify it, review it, and close with evidence.

When to use

• Implementing a feature or new behavior.
• A change you want planned and reviewed, not just typed in.
• Work where verification commands should run before you call it done.

What it does

Build runs seven stages, carrying each report forward to the next:

• Frame: confirms the Build brief: scope, constraints, and how the change will be proven. This is a checkpoint.
• Analyze: a read-only relay reads the codebase so the plan is grounded in the real source, not the brief alone. It also proposes the change's limits from what it reads.
• Plan: produces an ordered plan plus the verification commands to run, and carries the change's limits forward.
• Act: relays the implementation to a worker.
• Verify: runs the planned verification commands and records exit status and output.
• Review: relays the change to a separate worker for an independent review, which also checks that the change stayed inside its limits.
• Close: writes the Build result file and the chain of evidence. It will not mark the build complete if the change went outside its limits.

Checkpoints

Build has one checkpoint, at Frame. At high process it pauses to confirm the brief before implementation starts; otherwise it auto-resolves with its safe default, continue (see Checkpoints).

Limits

Build records what the change should not do alongside what it should. During Analyze, Circuit proposes the change's limits: what it must not do, taken from your goal; what must keep working, grounded in the code it reads; and an optional set of files it is allowed to touch, also from that read. You are never asked to list off-limits files.

Review judges the change against those limits, and Close enforces them. The build is not marked complete if it went beyond what was asked, did something it was told not to do, broke something that had to keep working, or left one of those limits unchecked.

When Analyze sets an allowed set of files, Close also checks it against git. It compares the files the change actually touched against that set; anything outside, or anything it cannot place, blocks completion. The check is opt-in: with no allowed set, it stays off and Build runs as before.

Example

/circuit:run add a CSV export button

circuit run build --goal 'add a CSV export button'