# core/concepts — Index

OKF reserved file (no frontmatter). Directory listing for progressive disclosure — read this to pick concepts, then fetch the file(s) you need.

- [agent-harness](agent-harness.md) — Everything wrapping the model that lets it finish work — and the Summary Gate, the input gate that compresses prior-session context into essential state.
- [control-plane](control-plane.md) — What it means for PMOS to be a control plane — it orchestrates, specs, evaluates, and routes agent work rather than generating production code itself.
- [design-craft](design-craft.md) — The UI/UX practice a design agent applies: perception/cognition evidence, craft moves, accessibility floors, and recorded anti-patterns (D60).
- [design-loop](design-loop.md) — How PMOS makes UI/UX design a first-class, repeatable sub-flow of the Build stage — brief → design → reconcile → build → design-sync — gated by the Review Gate, presentation-only, and never a data decision.
- [eval-driven-pm](eval-driven-pm.md) — PMOS's core method — write the eval before the build. The rubric is the spec; the PM manages by defining what "good" means, not by inspecting work after the fact.
- [frontmatter-format](frontmatter-format.md) — The repo-wide house frontmatter (`type` + `title` + `timestamp` on every tracked `.md`) and the Frontmatter Gate + registry that enforce it (D63); machine-readable classification by reading, not path-guessing.
- [health-anchors](health-anchors.md) — The second anchor class (D59): work anchors to a KR or a declared, capped, PM-reviewed health budget, so refactor/ops/security work anchors honestly.
- [okf-governance](okf-governance.md) — How PMOS organizes its Open Knowledge Format bundle and the governance rules that keep it spec-conformant.
- [okr-anti-optimism](okr-anti-optimism.md) — Why PMOS biases status reporting toward pessimism — surfacing the red underneath green metrics — to keep KR self-reporting honest.
- [okr-tree](okr-tree.md) — How PMOS structures Objectives and Key Results as a tree that links strategy to initiatives and to the agent runs that move them.
- [output-eval](output-eval.md) — How PMOS evaluates agent output through three escalating gates — Quality, Review, Acceptance — and why the PM owns only the last one.
- [pm-identity](pm-identity.md) — How PMOS models a product manager — the pm_slug identifier, the PM's authority as the human in the loop, and PM-scoped namespaces.
- [product-slug-convention](product-slug-convention.md) — The rules for product_slug — the stable lowercase identifier that scopes products across OKF namespaces, planning artifacts, and agent records.
- [sdlc-loop](sdlc-loop.md) — The closed agent-driven software development lifecycle PMOS orchestrates — spec, contract, build, evaluate, accept, learn — and how it loops.
- [self-refining-harness](self-refining-harness.md) — The pattern where the harness improves from its own run evidence (evals, friction, calibration) via a detect → draft → PM-gate loop, bounded at the L3 ceiling — never L4 self-mutation.
- [simplified-technical-english](simplified-technical-english.md) — ASD-STE100: the controlled-language standard (53 rules / 9 sections + a ~900-word one-meaning dictionary), what it deliberately does not cover, and why its register boundary matters to any house adoption.
- [watermelon-flag](watermelon-flag.md) — A status that reads green on automated metrics but is red underneath on strategic alignment — and silent drift, the L4 failure mode it signals.