Onboard a repository to native KI governance
Knowledge Islands repository governance resolves declared capabilities from verified installed compatible harnesses and executes them through the native ki host.
The contract behind that sentence is ADR-KI-HARNESS-012, in the KI Agentic Harness. It is recorded in the sources at the foot of this page; you do not need to read it to follow what is here.
Trust and installation
Each user has a KI XDG configuration and an installed compatible-harness set. ki bootstrap creates the configuration, installs the canonical knowledgeislands/ki-agentic-harness, and activates the core user skills for detected runtimes.
ki harness install <harness-id> adds another verified compatible harness. Installing a harness does not activate all of its capabilities or change a repository.
ki uses the standard XDG data, configuration, cache, and state locations. It does not define a separate KI home variable.
Repository declaration and activation
A KI repository carries a regular .ki.toml at its Git worktree root. [repo] names the harnesses it may draw from, and each [skills.<name>] table declares one governance capability by bare name. Govern a repository shows the file.
Activate a repository skill with:
ki repo skill add <skill> --repo <repository>
The command resolves one installed provider, updates the repository declaration, and creates managed runtime-discovery links. It refuses ambiguous providers and unfamiliar destination state.
ki repo skill remove reverses only the declaration and links whose ownership KI can prove. User activation is separate and uses ki skill add or ki skill remove.
ki-repo owns the judgment about which capabilities a repository should declare.
Native repository maintenance
The native operations are:
ki repo educate --repo <repository>
ki repo audit --repo <repository>
ki repo conform --repo <repository> --dry-run
They physically resolve the selected repository, read .ki.toml, validate declared dependencies, and load registered compatible operations from verified installed harnesses.
AUDIT is read-only. CONFORM applies only registered safe mechanical changes; --dry-run validates and reports without publishing. EDUCATE renders the declared rubric guidance.
Missing, incompatible, undeclared, ambiguous, or untrusted capabilities fail before an operation runs. --skill <skill> narrows an operation to one declared capability without changing repository coverage.
The host never invokes copied rubric runners, repository-local wrappers, a nearby checkout, or an ad hoc child-process fallback. Harness contributors record a checkout with ki dev local set <harness-id> <local-harness-path> and select it explicitly with ki dev local on [harness-id].
CI and automation
CI must establish a compatible released ki and its required verified harness inventory before running:
ki repo audit --repo .
The governance audit runs before the repository test suite. Automation fails when acquisition, verification, registry loading, operation availability, or declared-skill resolution fails; it does not bootstrap a checkout-local executor.
The harness's pre-commit hook audits a complete staged snapshot when governed skill sources change. That snapshot includes unchanged siblings, shared providers, and the repository-local ki-self source where applicable.
Existing repository-vendored state
The former models created .ki/ or .ki-meta/ executors and regular-file skill copies under repository runtime-discovery directories.
That material is now migration evidence, not an executor or a managed runtime link. Map every consumer to its native replacement, prove generated ownership, and replace unchanged runtime copies through ki repo skill.
If legacy state is altered, partial, unfamiliar, linked, dangling, escaping, or concurrently changed, preserve it and stop. A passing legacy runner does not prove that native governance is available.
Scope and recovery
User-owned state comprises the XDG configuration, installed harnesses, and managed user-runtime links. Repository-owned state comprises .ki.toml, managed repository-runtime links, the committed repository-local ki-self source, and writes proposed by registered native operations.
Use ki manage doctor for environment health, ki manage diag for installation mode and paths, ki bootstrap --refresh to reconcile configured inventory, and ki <command> --help for exact grammar.