Skip to main content

Practice Catalog

A practice is a habit Hephaestus reviews work against. Where a practice lives decides who owns it and what changing it affects.

ScopeOwnerChanging it affects
Bundled defaultsHephaestus releasesEvery instance that has not customized the entry
Instance catalogInstance administratorWhat workspaces may adopt next — never a copy already adopted
Workspace practiceWorkspace administratorReviews in that one workspace

The arrow only ever points right. A release can update an instance entry nobody customized, and an instance change alters what is on offer — but nothing rewrites a workspace practice. That is the whole point of adoption: a workspace can rely on its practices not changing under it.

Adopt a practice into a workspace​

In Workspace administration → Practice setup, select Show catalog. Available practices appear beside the ones you already have, grouped by area.

Select one to read it before deciding. You get the habit and why it matters first, then what good looks like, then — under disclosures — what the practice reads, how it decides, and what it measures before the model sees anything.

:::note Adding never starts sending feedback A practice Hephaestus can review starts at Review before sending. A practice it cannot review stays Off until you connect what it needs to read. Moving a practice to Send automatically is a separate decision you make later, on the Review screen. :::

What you get is a copy. Edit it, move it, rename it, delete it — none of that touches the catalog, and nothing in the catalog reaches back into it.

Adopt a whole area​

An area's action adopts everything in it that the workspace is missing. Hephaestus shows the full plan first — what it will add, what is already there, and anything it cannot add — and then applies all of it or none of it. If the catalog or your workspace changed while you were reading, the plan is refused and you review the current one.

Remove an area​

Removing an area asks what should happen to the practices in it:

  • Keep practices unassigned — they stay in the workspace, without an area.
  • Delete area and practices — this also deletes their observations, and cannot be undone.

If you kept them, the catalog offers Restore area, which puts the matching unassigned copies back without touching any edits you made to them.

Adopt something again​

Delete an adopted practice and the catalog includes it again immediately. Adoption is keyed on the practice's slug in your workspace, so you cannot end up with two copies of the same practice.

Read the badges​

A badge says how your copy stands against the entry it came from. All of them are informational: a copy never tracks the catalog, edited or not, so nothing here ever changes on its own.

In a workspace, comparing your copy against the catalog:

BadgeMeaningWhat to do
Same as the catalogYour copy still matches the entry it came fromNothing. It stays that way — the catalog never edits your copy
Edited hereYou changed the review rulesNothing, unless you meant to track the catalog
Catalog changed, yours did notThe catalog moved on after you adopted. Nothing applies that change to your copy — bring across what you want by editing itRead the catalog entry and copy anything you want by hand
No longer in the catalogThe source was excluded or removedNothing. Your copy keeps working

On the instance, comparing the catalog against the bundled defaults:

BadgeMeaning
Customized on this instanceYou edited it; the bundled definition has not moved
Hephaestus update availableYou edited it and a release changed the bundled definition
No Hephaestus defaultYou created it here
Removed from Hephaestus defaultsA release dropped it; your customization still applies

An update never replaces a customization silently. Open the entry to see the complete bundled definition and whether applying it would change review rules, guidance, or area appearance.

Drift compares only what changes review rules: slug, name, bindings, criteria, precompute script, the automated-review policy, and area. Why it matters and What good looks like are guidance — editing them never raises a drift badge.

How reliable a practice is​

Nobody has measured how often any practice is right. Each one carries its author's description of what it checks; that description has not been tested against real work, and the practice says so under What it reads. This is why a practice starts by asking you to approve each piece of feedback — keep it there until you have watched it on your own work.

Curate what the instance offers​

In Instance administration → Practice catalog you decide what workspaces may adopt.

  • Customize an entry to change its definition for this instance.
  • Stop offering an entry to take it off the menu. Workspaces that already adopted it keep their copies and notice nothing.
  • Use Hephaestus version discards your customization and returns to the bundled definition.
  • Use Hephaestus order discards custom positions.

Excluding an area also removes its practices from what workspaces may adopt.

Where practices come from on a new instance​

At startup, any workspace with no recorded catalog installation receives the whole catalog once. On a fresh instance that means the workspaces provisioned at boot arrive already stocked; you adopt to add what you passed over, and to add back anything you deleted.

See also​