FastPDLC 0.2.0 — evidence records and the agent-built lifecycle
Two new surfaces on top of the compiler and the gate. The core is unchanged - two dependencies, no network, still the thing CI runs.
Blog
Notes on product-as-code.
Why specs rot, what a validated graph buys you, and what breaks in real
repositories. Every post on this page is a typed artifact — ids, categories and
cross-links are validated by fastpdlc in CI.
Product-as-code in thirty minutes
A working glossary, a rulebook, and a CI gate, starting from an empty directory.
Finding the artifacts nobody references
A graph makes absence visible. Orphans are usually either dead weight or a missing link, and both are worth knowing about.
Rendering docs sites from one bundle
One compiled artifact, many surfaces. The point is not convenience -- it is that the surfaces cannot disagree.
What we learned running this in payments
FastPDLC was extracted from a payments platform running 39 features and a 283 KB bundle. Here is what survived contact with production.
Modelling lifecycles with enums
Four spellings of in-progress is not a naming problem. It is a missing constraint, and PAC-030 is the fix.
Reviewing product changes in pull requests
When intent lives in the repository, product decisions get the same review rigour as code. That changes the conversation more than the tooling does.
Feeding an LLM your product truth
A validated bundle is the best context you can give a model, precisely because something guarantees it is current.
Extending the validator with plugins
Validators, bundle transformers, extra outputs and custom codes -- the four hooks, and when to reach for each.
Migrating a wiki to product-as-code
How to move years of accumulated pages without a six-month project or a big-bang rewrite.
ADRs, RFCs and where product-as-code fits
Decision records answer why. Product-as-code answers what is true now. Conflating them is why both rot.
Naming artifact ids you will not regret
Ids are the most permanent thing you will write. A few conventions keep them from becoming a source of churn.
Writing business rules that survive contact with code
A rule that cannot be violated by a specific line of code is not a rule. It is a sentiment.
Commit the generated bundle
Build artifacts usually do not belong in git. This one does, and the reason is that it turns invisible drift into a reviewable diff.
Diagnostic codes are an API
Treat your error codes with the same seriousness as your function signatures, because downstream systems depend on both.
Anatomy of a product CI gate
What a good product gate checks, what it must never do, and why its exit code is the entire contract.
What a dangling reference actually costs
PAC-020 looks like a link checker. It is really a rename detector, and renames are where product knowledge goes to die.
Why typed artifacts beat free-form documents
The moment a document has a declared shape, a whole class of question becomes machine-answerable.
PAC-060, the check nobody else has
Schema validation is common. Reference checking is rare. Proving the committed build still matches its sources is the one that catches real drift.
Why specs rot, and why discipline will not fix it
Documentation decay is a structural problem, not a motivational one. Teams that resolve to try harder produce the same rot, slightly later.
What product-as-code actually means
Not docs in a repo. Typed artifacts with a schema, a reference graph, and a build that fails when they stop being true.
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