/aide:align — Alignment Phase

Agent: This command is executed by the aide-aligner agent.

Verify spec-vs-spec alignment and brevity across the intent tree. This is NOT QA — QA checks code against a spec; alignment checks whether specs are consistent with their ancestors and internally tight against the Brevity Contract. The aligner runs three passes per walk:

• Cascade pass — child outcomes vs. every ancestor's outcomes; flags contradictions, undermining, omissions
• Brevity pass — every spec measured against the caps (description ≤ 200 chars, intent ≤ 100 words, 3-4 outcomes per list with ≤ 2 sentences each, body sections under cap, no forbidden content)
• Sibling-redundancy pass — content duplicated across siblings under a common parent; that content belongs in the parent

The aligner produces todo.aide at every misaligned node with concrete items tagged by misalignment type. Cascade and sibling-redundancy use Misalignment: spec-gap; brevity uses Misalignment: spec-bloat. The aligner never rewrites specs — it flags only.

Checklist

• Call aide_discover on the target path to get the full ancestor chain
• Read each spec in the ancestor chain top-down via aide_read — load description, intent, outcomes, and body sections at every level
• Cascade pass: compare each child's outcomes.desired and outcomes.undesired against every ancestor's outcomes — look for contradictions, undermining, and critical omissions. Tag findings Misalignment: spec-gap.
• Brevity pass: measure every spec against the Brevity Contract caps and scan for forbidden content (type signatures, file paths, exact strings, function names, argument indexes, implementation contracts, migration history). Tag findings Misalignment: spec-bloat.
• Sibling-redundancy pass: at every parent with multiple children specs, compare children's content for material that appears in two or more. Flag the children (not the parent) with Misalignment: spec-gap, naming the duplicated content and where it should live (parent).
• For misaligned specs: set status: misaligned on the leaf spec's frontmatter and produce todo.aide at the leaf with items from any pass that found drift
• For aligned specs (no drift across all three passes): set status: aligned on the spec's frontmatter
• Report results with verdict (ALIGNED/MISALIGNED), count of specs checked, total drift count broken down by pass (cascade / brevity / sibling-redundancy), and todo.aide paths created
• Recommended next step depends on the dominant category: cascade or sibling-redundancy → /aide:spec to revise the flagged specs; brevity → /aide:refactor --specs <path> for a batched cascade-aware sweep
• Do NOT rewrite specs — flag only