What a feature is
A feature is something a team gets by installing Vinaya, independent of how that team works. It knows nothing about role names, ticket shapes or review rules. Features work around whatever development process runs: the process produces the record, and the features read it and set it up.
Three properties make something a feature rather than a part of a process:
- It is generic. Two teams with opposite ways of working use it the same way.
- It is declared in configuration. It is switched on, pointed somewhere, or parameterized in
vinaya.. It is never written in prose an agent has to read.config. json - It is a product promise. Each feature carries part of the product's guarantees, and the product proves that part, not the process.
The five features
| Feature | What a team gets | Where it is declared |
|---|---|---|
| Log | Every governed act kept as a typed event, delivered where you say | logs |
| Telemetry | That record counted: cost, time, review strictness, which checks catch most, the milestone report | Nothing; it reads the Log (vinaya sync) |
| Studio | The dashboard and Mission Control, reading that record | Nothing; you get it |
| Self-improvement | The Improver reads the reports and proposes changes to the process; the Principal approves | Nothing; it reads the Log |
| Configuration | One committed file that says how this repository is governed | The file itself |
Free, paid and later
Features are the unit of packaging; Dev Process is not one. Everything ships together in one public npm package, with a subscription login to the agent vendors. Later, a feature is what a tier switches on: the Log server, Studio across many repositories, a second development process. No feature assumes it is always present: a repository with the Log pointed at a folder and no Studio is a valid installation.
What is not a feature
Dev Process is not a feature. It is what runs across the features: the contract any development process fulfils to run on the harness and get the Log. See Dev Process.
The Vinaya process is not a feature. It is the default process, under Dev Process. Its Integration pages document how it fulfils the contract; its stages, Thinking, Executing, Retrospecting and Self-improvement, and its Gates, which run across them, have pages of their own. See The Vinaya process.