Rule
DPF delivers software through three interchangeable delivery surfaces: Claude Code, Codex CLI, and the embedded Build Studio. They are peers, not a hierarchy. None is privileged; work never depends on any one being healthy. All three advance the one common governed lifecycle — the Build Studio state machine ideate → plan → build → review → ship, advanced by evidence at each gate, right-sized by a (type × size) policy matrix. The phase graph never changes; a skipped phase gets an auto-pass gate. Each transition runs the gate check — nothing is rubber-stamped, regardless of surface.
Why
The enabling principle already exists and is operator-ratified: governance-approves-evidence-not-provenance. A gate reads only its required evidence fields and never branches on who produced them — which is exactly what makes three surfaces interchangeable. When the surfaces are not declared peers under one process, they diverge: one gets treated as primary, the others route around it, and the lifecycle fragments into three incompatible flows. The process is provenance-agnostic by design so it survives any surface being down, slow, or mid-upgrade.
The interactive surfaces (Claude/Codex) produce evidence and call the gate directly through MCP. The embedded surface (Build Studio) keeps its auto-advance engine but must converge on the same gate/evidence contract. Stabilizing that engine is the engine-first priority (spec §7 Q4) so Build Studio is a true peer surface, not a workaround the other two route around indefinitely.
How To Apply
- Run every delivery — by any surface — through the same lifecycle phases and the same gate checks.
- Right-size with the
(type, size)policy: a chore-small skips ideate+review; a doc drops UX/acceptance; an xlarge decomposes. Skipped phases auto-pass; they are never deleted from the graph. - Never add a gate branch that reads the producing surface. If a gate would behave differently for Claude vs. Codex vs. Build Studio, that is the bug.
- Never treat a single surface as the system of record for whether work happened — that belongs to the MCP coordination plane (
mcp-is-the-coordination-plane).
Decision Dimensions
long_term_maintainability: 0.9— one lifecycle to maintain instead of three divergent ones.governance_compliance: 0.7— every delivery passes the same evidence gates.blast_radius: -0.6— no single surface outage can stall delivery.reusability: 0.6— the same gate/evidence contract serves any future surface.
Related
governance-approves-evidence-not-provenance— the keystone that makes surfaces interchangeable.mcp-is-the-coordination-plane— the executor-agnostic source of truth all three write to.architecture-over-shortcuts— converging on one contract over per-surface shortcuts.- AGENTS.md §17 — operational summary.
- Unified Delivery Surfaces spec §3.1, §7 — design context and WWMD decisions.
Origin
Unified Delivery Surfaces spec, 2026-06-05 (WWMD-ratified). Operator framing: “Build Studio is a 3rd delivery process like Claude and Codex, but more embedded.”