Introduction

Every change in the Cogitave estate - a feature, a fix, a doc, an infra tweak, a dependency bump - moves through one process. That process is not a habit or a team convention; it is written down, and it is the authority the automation implements.

A unit of change is a Request: a first-class Cogitave Core node (cogitave://request/{id}), just like an Agent or a Doc. Humans and agents drive the same Request through the same stages over MCP, so "what state is this change in, and why" is a single query an auditor can answer. The canonical description of those stages is LIFECYCLE.md - this module teaches you to read and use it, not to memorise a paraphrase of it.

The one rule to carry in

The lifecycle does not invent policy; it sequences the floor you already learned into auditable stages. The rule that shapes everything else is propose-only:

That is why the whole process has exactly two write tools, and why neither of them can change the world on its own. You will see what they do - and do not do - in the next unit.

What you will get from this module

Not a checklist to obey blindly - a working model of how a change travels from an idea to done: the seven stages and what advances each, why the write tools only propose, and how to read the Definition of Done so you can tell when a Request is genuinely finished versus merely worked on.