Greenfield, without the chaos.
Every project starts the same way: a half-written README, an empty CONTRIBUTING.md, and an AI that doesn't know your rules. Groundwork is the substrate. CLAUDE.md, contributor playbook, AI session rules, lessons-learned library, build-log. One command, every standard already written. The next thing you type is your first feature.
Boilerplate generates code. Groundwork generates standards.
Other scaffolders give you a Next.js app or a Rails skeleton, the code half of the equation. Groundwork ships the other half: the standards layer. The CLAUDE.md every AI session loads. The voice rules every contributor follows. The lessons-learned library every project pulls from. Versioned at the template level, so when standards evolve, every project can absorb the update with one command.
Drift, silos, lossy memory
- Your AI session in shell A loads different rules than shell B, or none at all
- Last quarter's CLAUDE.md drifts further from this quarter's standards with every new repo
- Voice rules and banned-vocabulary rebuilt per project, from memory
- Lessons learned on Tuesday's project never reach Thursday's
- "Build-log entry, ADR, or just a comment?" answered differently in every repo
- No path to update the substrate of existing repos when standards evolve
One substrate, current everywhere
- Same CLAUDE.md, same rules, every project, every shell, every machine
- Templates versioned upstream; one source of truth across the whole portfolio
- Voice and tone audited at the template level; every project inherits the latest pass
- Pulse intake surfaces lessons across projects so the team gets smarter automatically
- Build-log, ADR slots, lessons schemas pre-scaffolded; the question doesn't get asked twice
- groundwork refresh rewrites the substrate of existing repos when standards change
Three glances at what lands in your repo.
A flavor of the substrate. There's more under the hood; we're keeping some surprises for early access.
# my-app
## Voice
## Diligence
## Git rules
## Verification
The substrate, six surfaces.
Engineering surfaces every serious project needs. Written once, scaffolded everywhere. Tuned by profile.
AI session rules
CLAUDE.md committed and team-shared. Voice standards, code rules, ethics constraints, attribution prohibitions. Every AI session in every shell on every machine loads the same context, so rework from drift gets eliminated upstream.
Contributor playbook
docs/contributing/ with ai-workflow, branch-strategy, security, lessons-learned, ROADMAP, CHANGELOG. Issue templates and PR template wired into .github/.
Lessons-learned library
A schema for capturing project-specific lessons that promote upstream into the shared library. Stop losing what you learned on the last project.
Build-log baked in
A living dev journal with phases, decisions, and why-it-mattered context. Future contributors (and future AI sessions) read it cold and pick up where you paused.
Language-aware
Node, Python, Rust, Go. The right .gitignore, the right preflight scripts, the right deploy rituals if you ask for them.
Pulse intake
A cross-project lessons feed that surfaces patterns worth promoting from one project to another. The team gets smarter without anyone having to remember.
Tuned for the project, not against it.
Pick a profile based on the project's size and stakes. The substrate is the same. The scaffold around it adjusts to fit.
For small projects, fast.
Cog repos. Side projects. Single-purpose tools. CLI utilities. Anything where you want standards baked in without enterprise ceremony.
- CLAUDE.md, LICENSE, CONTRIBUTING.md
- docs/contributing/ slim and focused
- build-log auto-included
- Issue + PR templates
- Optional MkDocs site if you want one
For projects that have to scale.
Production apps. Public-sector or regulated work. Multi-contributor teams. Anything where decision history and audit trails are not optional.
- Everything in Lite
- docs/decisions/ with ADR scaffold
- Pre-commit hooks, CI pipeline, release ritual gates
- preflight.sh / preflight.ps1 scripts
- Full MkDocs site by default
- Branch protection and gate config
Built it for ourselves. Sharing it next.
Groundwork is the tool xsvStudio uses on every project we ship. We're polishing the public release. Early access gets you the CLI, the templates, and a direct line to the maintainers.
Want in early?
Star the repo to follow development, or email us if you want to talk through whether Groundwork fits your project. We'll come back with a yes, a no, or a "wait six weeks."