---
id: CANP-WP-0004
type: workplan
title: "Catalog index: where a package came from and when"
domain: agents
repo: canned-prompts
status: finished
owner: codex
topic_slug: practice
created: "2026-09-06"
updated: "2026-09-06"
state_hub_workstream_id: "4fc1883c-8103-5ef6-9b25-5eaad2aee0a8"
---

# Catalog index: where a package came from and when

Driven by packaging a real collection (`helix-forge` `HF-WP-0005`). The operator
asked for canned-prompts to "build a database of versioned prompts", recording
the source a prompt came from and the date it was included — the first step
toward a platform for collaborative prompting.

The format had no place for this. `provenance` (§ 13) records who wrote a prompt
and where the idea came from, but nothing recorded how a *copy* arrived in a
*particular* store.

## Fix practice/pqrst-estimate to be the canonical prompt

```task
id: CANP-WP-0004-T01
status: done
priority: high
state_hub_task_id: "0fb4602a-f561-5ecb-acb2-1888c24f9710"
```

**Found while researching helix-forge.** `examples/pqrst-estimate` was not the
canonical PQRST prompt. The canonical one is `~/pqrst-practice/PqrstPrompt.md`,
normatively specified in `spec/PqrstEstimationPractice.md`, and
`hall-of-helix/CLOSING.md` requires pasting it unmodified. Ours was a paraphrase
with a different output shape — no `Confidence`, no `Signature`, no `Dominant
factors` — and `CANP-WP-0002-T03` had made it worse by prepending a
`house_style` inclusion to a prompt whose governing document says do not modify
it.

A copied prompt that silently forked its source, sitting in the examples
directory of the repo whose `INTENT.md` opens by naming that exact failure.

Fixed: the template is the canonical block extracted programmatically rather
than retyped, and the default render is byte-identical at 2886 bytes.
`evals/canonical-fidelity.yaml` guards it with sixteen render checks, including
`not_contains` checks naming the paraphrase it used to be. Version 0.2.1 →
1.0.0, the § 17 MAJOR case.

The source documents two optional add-ons appended after the block. CPF has no
conditionals, so `add_ons` is an input defaulting to the empty string and each
add-on is an example fixture. Adequate, but a workaround — recorded as evidence
about § 23's deferred "richer template syntax".

## Add the index

```task
id: CANP-WP-0004-T02
status: done
priority: high
state_hub_task_id: "4ceb7e8b-3ed7-5019-918c-59d5bcdb9b91"
```

A store may keep an `index.yaml` recording which package versions entered it,
from where, and when. Specified in § 20.3, deliberately as **store** metadata
rather than package data: how a copy arrived differs for every consumer, and
recording an arrival must never rewrite the package that arrived (§ 17).

`add`, `install` and `publish` record an entry carrying registry, id, version,
name, source, method, `included_at`, the package's declared author and source,
and its licence — the last two copied so a listing is readable without opening
every package. A new `index` verb lists it.

`included_at` is first arrival and is never overwritten; a re-run updates
`last_seen_at` instead. When a package first entered a collection is a fact
about history, not about the last time someone ran a command.

`reference/canned_prompts.py`: `read_index`, `record_inclusion`,
`index_entry_key`, `cmd_index`. Tests 84 → 90.

## Record the inclusion-deduplication gap

```task
id: CANP-WP-0004-T03
status: done
priority: medium
state_hub_task_id: "fdab9028-3cee-5425-8f78-165ef03b39fe"
```

**Found by using the format.** `helix/repo-advance` composed
`helix/commit-sync`, which composes `helix/custodian-conventions`, while also
composing the conventions itself. The rendered prompt contained the conventions
block twice: CPF inclusion has no deduplication, so a diamond dependency renders
shared content once per path.

Not fixed in the format. Deduplicating would mean deciding *which* occurrence
survives and what happens when the two paths resolve different versions — that
is resolver behaviour, and § 10.4 keeps composition declarative on purpose.
Nothing in § 10.4 currently warns an author, which is the actual defect.

Downstream this was fixed by factoring (`HF-WP-0005-T03`), which is the right
answer for a collection and may be the right general advice.

**Handed to `CANP-WP-0005`:** document the diamond behaviour in § 10.4 and
decide whether a validator should warn when one package reaches the same
dependency by two paths.