Introduction

A new repository should never have to ask "what are the rules here?". In most organisations it does, and every repo answers a little differently — one wires its own CI, another skips signed commits, a third invents its own error shape. The drift is the cost.

Cogitave removes the question. A new project is born on the paved road: the floor applies, the standards apply, the scaffold is already in place, the lifecycle is wired, the company identity is embodied, and the patterns catalog already answers most "how do I do X" questions. The single document that states this complete inherited ruleset is the project baseline — the inheritance contract. It references each source of truth rather than restating it, and where the contract and a linked authority disagree, the authority wins.

This module is about that inheritance: what a repo gets for free, how the scaffold bakes it in from birth, and the one habit that keeps you on the road — discover before you build.

What you will be able to do

• Explain how a repo inherits its whole ruleset automatically, instead of re-deciding it.
• Scaffold a repo so the baseline is present from the first commit.
• Tell an always-on standard from one a product type pulls in.
• Find an existing pattern before you generate new code.