update-canon

Update a canon

Canonify's maintenance gate. Where /canonify:create-canon authors a new canon from a file/service/element, this gate edits an existing one: you discovered something while coding - a footgun, a sharper rule, a pattern that drifted - and you want it captured now, in flow, without hand-editing markdown. Describe the update; this gate finds the right canon, decides whether the knowledge is already there, and either tells you it's covered or adds it cleanly.

It routes off CANONIFY.md exactly like build/commit (match the summary lines), and writes to the same house-style as create-canon (${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/templates/doc-style.md): cite every claim file:line, ASCII punctuation, terse and project-specific.

How to run

1. Get the update. The user describes what they learned. If they didn't say it, ask once: "what did you discover, and which area does it touch?" Don't guess the content.

2. Route to the canon. Find which existing canon owns this. Same selector as build/commit: read CANONIFY.md, match the update against the one-line summaries. Usually it's inferable from the file in play (working in form code -> the FormBuilder canon) or named outright. Confirm the target in one line. If two canons could own it, ask which. If NO canon covers the area at all, stop and hand off: this gate edits existing canons - say so and suggest /canonify:create-canon.

3. Load the canon + re-read the cited code. Read the target canon in full, and re-read the specific code it cites for the affected section. You need both: the doc (to dedup against) and the live code (so any addition is cited to a real file:line and any "is it still true" check is against reality, not just the old prose).

4. Triage the update against the canon - the dedup check. This is the core. Decide which case:

   • Already covered, still accurate -> Don't edit. Tell the user where it's documented (section
     • the file:line it cites). Offer a sharpen only if the wording is genuinely weak (buried, vague, easy to miss); otherwise say it's covered and stop.
   • Partially covered or stale -> Propose a revision: tighten the rule, add the missed nuance, or correct what no longer matches the code. Show before -> after for the changed lines.
   • Not covered -> Draft the addition in house-style, cited to file:line, placed in the right section by kind: a footgun -> Gotchas; a new or sharper rule -> The pattern; a new call site -> Recipes; a config key -> Configuration / API surface.