init-preset

The preset system — default preset = the live .config instance set; non-default presets (careful) are cumulative template packages selection stacks on at spex init; selection only matters at seed time.

The init preset is the policy half of adoption — which plugins a project ends up with. The mechanism (the CLI scaffold that copies template files into a target tree) belongs to spex-init; this node describes only the preset system.

Default preset = the instance. The lean default preset is the .config instance set — the dev-flow plugins SpexCode actually runs (the contract, the commands, the scout). It is also the seed a plain spex init plants, shipped as the spec-cli/templates/spec/project/.config mirror of that live tree. The dotted .config (the instance) and the un-dotted config (this spec of the config system) stay strictly distinct: a non-default preset NEVER lives in .config.

Non-default presets are template packages. A more cautious tier — careful — is a separate source package under spec-cli/templates/presets/<name>/, mirroring the default template layout (a .config/<plugin> subtree). It is shippable CLI code, not a spec node in this repo and never part of the live .config the launcher walks. Its first member is clarify-before-code — surface a misread as a stated assumption in the proposal, blocking the human only on a load-bearing ambiguity.

Cumulative. The tiers form a chain, lean → cautious: careful is a strict superset of default. Selecting careful seeds the default .config set AND stacks the careful package on top of it.

Selection matters only at seed time. A project picks its tier with spex init --preset <name> (or an existing spexcode.json preset field); the named package is copied in on top of the default. There is no per-plugin preset: field — membership is which package directory a plugin lives in, not a frontmatter flag — and no launcher-side preset gate: once seeded, the running repo simply gathers whatever ended up in its .config, so the whole notion of a preset is spent at spex init and invisible thereafter.