DKF Development Modes — Increment 002: initialization and persistent configuration

[eybersjp]

Increment 002 — stacked implementation

Dependency: Draft PR #42 (Increment 001). This branch starts at feature/development-modes-increment-001; it does not merge, accept or alter that PR. The PR was initially based on main to run the repository's Ubuntu/Windows CI (configured only for PRs targeting main). Following a successful validation run, it was retargeted to feature/development-modes-increment-001 so this PR displays only Increment 002 changes. Coordinate with still-draft PR #41 (Live UI Preview) before any eventual merge/release.

Delivered

• Repository-owned .development-kit/development-mode.json with canonical selection and logical revision history in one atomically replaced file, guarded by a lock and strict fail-closed validation.
• Bootstrap integration: fresh default Balanced; headless explicit --mode/--config-file; preserved valid existing mode; recorded migration of legacy projects.
• CLI: numbered TTY selection, --mode-status, --history, explicit --set-mode requiring current revision/reason, and nonmutating --recommend.
• Deterministic, transparent mode recommendations; no AI-imposed selection.
• Canonical/mirrored /dk-autopilot instruction to select or migrate methodology before first lifecycle action.
• Documentation and project memory; new node regression suite added to npm run release:validate.

Deliberately deferred

Increment 003 will make lifecycle, document selection, and contract generation actually consume the selected mode; 004 will implement mode-aware documentation engine; 005 will verify cross-mode compatibility/host acceptance. This PR does not change existing Autopilot autonomy, evidence, approval, design authority or acceptance engine. No release/version/tag/npm publication.

Verification and acceptance

• Ubuntu npm run release:validate — PASS
• Windows npm run release:validate — PASS
• Independent review against INIT-001–INIT-011 and diff
• Verify legacy/corrupt migrations, no silent override, change history and CLI
• Review mode-selection interaction in actual host environment
• Product Owner acceptance and integration/rebase with upstream PRs

Do not mark ready for review or release solely because automated tests pass.

Validation evidence (27 September 2026)

• GitHub Actions run 36348538497 on commit b66a9b8d833848ba86c0240d68971ee12ad97875: Ubuntu PASS, Windows PASS; both ran the exact release-validation command.
• New combined initialization test suite: 21/21 PASS on Ubuntu; the Windows job also completed release validation successfully.
• Prior run identified a missing closing parenthesis in one new regression test. Corrected in the above commit and rerun; do not count the failed prior run as acceptance evidence.
• Focused comparison after retarget: 17 Increment 002 files relative to Increment 001.

Acceptance state: automated validation passed; Product Owner host interaction and independent criterion acceptance remain open. PR remains draft. The PR is stacked on still-draft #42; neither that PR nor #41 was merged or released.

[eybersjp]

This stacked draft is being closed as stale historical implementation evidence. Its initialization/persistence work is preserved at head b66a9b8d833848ba86c0240d68971ee12ad97875 and all remaining INIT/increments 003–005 obligations are now tracked in Issue #50. The old stack predates v0.11.0/v0.11.1 and must not be merged directly.