Conventions

Share coding conventions across every plan in a repo with .workbench/conventions.md.

.workbench/conventions.md is a project-level, shared conventions file. It holds the coding standards every plan in the repo should follow, so you don't have to repeat a ## Conventions section in each plan.

Drop your TypeScript rules, test commands, naming patterns, and git etiquette in one place and every plan in the repo inherits them.

How it's applied

At run time, if a plan has no ## Conventions section, workbench injects the contents of .workbench/conventions.md as a fallback. The injection is idempotent — if the plan already has a ## Conventions section, the shared file is skipped and the plan's own conventions are used. A plan-level ## Conventions section always wins over the shared file.

The resulting conventions text is seen by every agent role: implementor, tester, reviewer, fixer, summarizer, branch reviewer, and PR writer. That keeps the whole pipeline aligned on the same standards.

Planner awareness

When .workbench/conventions.md exists, wb plan is told not to write its own ## Conventions section — the shared file is canonical and the planner stays out of its way. When the file is absent, the planner may write a ## Conventions section if the source material implies one.

This means you can adopt a shared conventions file at any time without conflicting with the planner.

Commands

Manage the shared file with wb conventions:

wb conventions init              # write a starter conventions.md from a template
wb conventions init --generate   # scan the codebase with an agent to draft conventions
wb conventions edit              # open conventions.md in $EDITOR
wb conventions show              # print conventions.md to stdout
wb conventions delete            # remove the file

Tip: --generate uses the generate-conventions skill to survey the repo (languages, test runners, lint config, existing style) and produce a tailored draft instead of a blank template.

Template

wb conventions init writes a starter file with these sections:

# Project conventions
 
## Code style
- ...
 
## Testing
- ...
 
## Git
- ...
 
## Naming
- ...
 
## Other
- ...

Fill in the bullets with whatever your project actually requires — TypeScript strict mode, lint commands, branch naming rules, package manager, etc. Keep entries short and imperative; agents follow these as direct instructions.

See also

• Plans — how ## Conventions works inside a plan
• Plan Frontmatter — run-time defaults declared per plan
• Skills — including generate-conventions used by wb conventions init --generate