Initiatives

An initiative is a named scope for related work. It has a name, optional description, and creation timestamp. Tasks, gates, and knowledge nodes normally reference a registered initiative, which makes views and scoped guidance easier to understand.

An initiative is not a task and has no ready, blocked, or satisfied state. Its nodes retain their own lifecycle states, and dependencies may cross initiative boundaries. Registering an initiative or grouping a node never satisfies a BLOCKS edge; only the rules for the blocker node can do that.

Register before adding nodesCopy Anchor Link

Create an initiative first:

climier add-initiative publishing \
  --desc "Prepare and release the public documentation" \
  --as alice

Then attach nodes to it:

climier add-task draft-homepage \
  --initiative publishing \
  --title "Draft the homepage" \
  --body "Write the first public homepage draft." \
  --acceptance "The draft meets its acceptance criteria." \
  --blocked-by "" \
  --as alice

climier add-knowledge editorial-guidance \
  --initiative publishing \
  --title "Use concise headings" \
  --body "Headings should describe the reader's task." \
  --scope-initiatives publishing \
  --as alice

Node creation fails when the initiative name is not registered, unless the explicit unregistered-initiative escape hatch is used. Duplicate initiative names are rejected, so a spelling mistake does not silently create a second project area.

Initiative viewsCopy Anchor Link

Use the initiative listing to see the group and its counts:

climier initiatives
climier status --initiative publishing

The status view derives each task independently. For example, draft-homepage can be ready while another publishing task is blocked by an open gate. A submitted task remains submitted and does not satisfy a dependent task until accepted; an active knowledge node contributes context but never satisfies a dependency.

Dependencies can cross initiatives when that reflects the real graph. If a publishing task waits for a gate in a security initiative, the incoming BLOCKS edge still points from the security gate to the publishing task. The task becomes ready only when that gate is satisfied, regardless of the initiative filter used to display it.

Keeping the scope usefulCopy Anchor Link

Use initiatives for durable objectives rather than temporary ownership. Use domains and tags for technical or topical filtering, and use knowledge scopes when guidance should apply to several initiatives. This keeps status, context, and knowledge matches useful without changing the underlying satisfaction rules.

See Tasks, Gates, and Knowledge for the node-specific states, and State and storage for how initiatives are represented in a project snapshot.