Lifecycle Overview

The runtime package moves work through one explicit lifecycle:

1. parse a command and resolve defaults
2. collect or load source inputs
3. normalize and stage tracked files
4. publish report artifacts from the tracked inputs
5. hand the resulting outputs to docs and review workflows

Important Boundaries

• collection can rewrite tracked data/ outputs
• reporting can rewrite tracked docs/report/ outputs
• docs publishing is downstream of runtime outputs, not a substitute for them

Why The Lifecycle Matters

When a change breaks the lifecycle order, reviewers lose the ability to reason about whether a diff came from source refresh, report publishing, or unrelated maintenance work.

Purpose

This page gives the package's high-level operational sequence before later sections dive into module and contract detail.