Guides

Choose a task, then inspect its outcome before starting. Each guide covers inputs, review, results and recovery. Guide estimates are not promises about your project’s duration.

New to codeArbiter? Choose a host and install it first. Ready to hand off a change? Follow Review and ship a change.

19 guides

Initialize and understand

Start with the repository you have, then inspect the context it produces.

• Opt a Repository In

  a repository-owned state store populated for the project and an activation flag that all supported hosts recognize.

  Level

  Foundation

  Guide estimate

  10–20 min

• Plan a New Project

  Three reviewed project-planning documents and initialized repository context, without inventing a codebase.

  Level

  Foundation

  Guide estimate

  Guided interview; may span sessions

• Understand an Existing Project

  Source-backed project context with uncertainty and verification commands made explicit.

  Level

  Foundation

  Guide estimate

  Repository-dependent guided extraction

Make a change

Define the behavior, review the artifacts, and choose attended or autonomous work.

• Complete One Feature

  Review an observable export contract and follow its requirements into implementation, verification, and a governed PR.

  Level

  Practitioner

  Guide estimate

  Worked example; implementation time depends on scope

• Build a Feature End to End

  Run feature work from one-line intent through approved spec, obligation-mapped TDD, review, commit, and PR.

  Level

  Practitioner

  Guide estimate

  15 min

• Investigate and Fix a Defect

  A cited diagnosis and named regression obligation, followed by a verified correction or an explicit decision not to change code.

  Level

  Practitioner

  Guide estimate

  Depends on the evidence

• Review Specifications and Plans

  An informed review of the actual requirements and execution plan, with the right format and authority boundary.

  Level

  Practitioner

  Guide estimate

  15 min reading; review depends on scope

• Run an Autonomous Sprint

  a safe operating model for autonomous plan-to-PR work, including resumability, SMARTS decisions, hard stops, and exact-head evidence.

  Level

  Power user

  Guide estimate

  15–20 min

Review and ship

Distinguish findings, decisions, commits, pull requests and publication.

• Review and Ship a Change

  A reviewed change with a commit, a pull request and an explicit handoff, or a read-only verdict on someone else's PR.

  Level

  Practitioner

  Guide estimate

  Follow your project's gates

• Add a Dependency Safely

  An explicit adoption decision or a confirmed one-time inspection, with the exact version, policy, command and resulting changes accounted for.

  Level

  Practitioner

  Guide estimate

  10–20 min, plus review

• Record an Architecture Decision

  Create, inspect, and supersede an attributable ADR without rewriting history.

  Level

  Practitioner

  Guide estimate

  10 minutes

• Cut a Release

  A target-specific release whose version, source, declared artifacts and publication evidence agree.

  Level

  Power user

  Guide estimate

  15 min reading; qualification depends on the target

Operate and recover

Read the current state before resuming, repairing or removing anything.

• Return to a Project

  A justified next action based on the actual branch, artifacts, questions and evidence.

  Level

  Practitioner

  Guide estimate

  10 min

• Resume and Recover Work

  Continue an existing feature or sprint without fabricating authority, losing records or repeating an uncertain write.

  Level

  Practitioner

  Guide estimate

  Symptom-driven

• Troubleshooting

  a deterministic diagnosis path from visible symptom to activation, interpreter, cache, hook, or host-adapter cause.

  Level

  Power user

  Guide estimate

  Symptom-driven

• Override a Gate Safely

  Distinguish a repair from a justified bypass and verify the immediate, permanent audit record.

  Level

  Power user

  Guide estimate

  9 minutes

• Uninstall & Disable

  Disable one repository or remove a host plugin without losing project records or another tool's git hooks.

  Level

  Practitioner

  Guide estimate

  12 minutes

• Set Up the Statusline

  Wire, read, diagnose, and remove the Claude Code statusline safely.

  Level

  Practitioner

  Guide estimate

  10 minutes

Practice and advanced tooling

Use separate tooling only when its boundary fits your task.

• ca-sandbox: Explore Untrusted Code

  a disposable offline sandbox you can create, inspect, copy an artifact out of, and tear down while preserving the host-filesystem boundary.

  Level

  Labs

  Guide estimate

  15–30 min

Arbiter Academy provides prepared, verifier-backed practice with its own prerequisites. The Learning Path is guided reading, and Feature Forge explains preview maturity. Use the site’s main search for full-text documentation. The complete reference provides exact invocations and source. Clear intent does not replace an approval required by the owning lane.