commandkit/docs/roadmap/aliases.md

Application-owned aliases

Status: command-alias direction accepted; implementation has not started. Public API and remaining routing details are open. Flag aliasing is under discussion. This roadmap records the target and work needed before implementation.

Purpose and ownership

Make alternate command spellings and shorter paths simple for consuming applications to declare. CommandKit core owns alias registration, resolution, and integration with routing and help. Applications choose their aliases. Integrated libraries continue to own their canonical command behavior.

Aliases occupy a separate application routing layer above installed canonical commands:

CLI argument tokens
  → command-path alias resolution
  → canonical command routing and parsing
  → ordinary invocation lifecycle

Alias declarations do not install new handlers or modify the canonical command tree. An alias spelled inside promptkit therefore does not add an application-owned operation to the integration's namespace. The ownership and placement rules in ADR 0011 and the architecture policy continue to govern canonical command installation.

Current baseline

Core captures reusable Command declarations and installs them through New and App.Register. Installation validates a batch before registry mutation. Optional standard families own their installed root namespaces. Core routing and the internal backend coordinate parsing, help, and execution through one invocation lifecycle.

The current public model has no application alias layer. PromptKit already exposes the collection catalog and smoke-test commands used in the examples below. These examples illustrate alternate routes to existing capabilities; they do not introduce new PromptKit operations.

The CLI reference owns current grammar. Options follow the complete command path, can be interspersed with operands, and use -- to terminate option parsing. Aliasing preserves the target's grammar and typed binding contracts.

Selected command-alias behavior

Paths and resolution

Declare mappings between command paths relative to the application root. The executable name is not part of either path:

Alias path	Target path
list collections	promptkit list collections
promptkit test full	promptkit test all
list	promptkit list

Aliases can target individual commands or groups. A group alias preserves remaining subcommand tokens. For example, list collections can reach promptkit list collections through the list group alias.

Match complete argument tokens at the beginning of the command path. Resolve overlapping alias paths using the longest match. Preserve trailing arguments, including flags, operands, explicit empty values, and --, for canonical parsing. Values and operands are not searched for alias text.

Support alias chains and resolve them to their canonical target. Validate targets and reject cycles during installation. Resolution must terminate; the treatment of group-prefix composition is part of the remaining detailed design.

The initial command-alias feature maps command paths. Preset flags, operand transformation, and arbitrary argument rewriting are outside this delivery.

Installation and collisions

Provide a small core API for aliases that composes with installation of application and integration commands. The public declaration and registration shape remains open; earlier illustrative Alias calls are not a settled Go API.

An alias target may already be installed or be supplied in the same installation batch. Declaration order within that batch does not affect resolution. Missing targets, collisions, and cycles produce installation errors with useful path context. Failed installation preserves the existing application registry and alias mappings under the existing batch-atomicity model.

Reject aliases that shadow existing canonical command paths. Preserve that protection when later registration adds commands. Detailed prefix interactions remain open below. Aliases do not create canonical parent groups, merge integration trees, or replace handlers.

Execution and help

An invocation through an alias uses the canonical target's flags, operands, defaults, typed bindings, input preparation, providers, diagnostics, and outcomes. Execute the ordinary lifecycle once. Alias registration, resolution, and help do not invoke application input/state factories or acquisition callbacks.

Retain the entered alias path and resolved canonical path for routing and presentation. Whether this identity is exposed through the public invocation API remains open.

Support both help forms:

scriptorium help list collections
scriptorium list collections --help

Alias help describes the canonical target's inputs using the alias invocation path and identifies the canonical command. Root help presents aliases separately from canonical commands. Group help and discovery details remain to be specified.

Work needed from the baseline

1. Settle the public alias API and the open routing details with consumer examples covering a command shortcut, a synonym inside an integration namespace, and a group shortcut.
2. Capture the durable separation between application alias routing and canonical namespace ownership in an ADR. Keep exact API, matching, and presentation details in their appropriate contracts. No relaxation of canonical namespace ownership is selected.
3. Extend installation to validate aliases and commands against the complete candidate batch, preserving retained errors and atomicity. Keep aliases independent of optional-library dependencies and backend-specific exports.
4. Integrate alias resolution with canonical routing, help, and invocation identity. Reuse the existing parser and typed execution machinery.
5. Add focused behavioral evidence for both example mappings, group aliases, longest matches, chains and cycles, collisions, missing targets, same-batch resolution, later registration, argument preservation, help without acquisition, and a single execution lifecycle.
6. Add maintained consumer examples and update GoDoc, the CLI reference, consumer guidance, and internal documentation when implementation lands. Validate the affected modules under the developer guide.

Completion means consumers can declare alternate paths with minimal wiring, receive installation-time feedback, and invoke canonical behavior and help through those paths while canonical namespace ownership stays intact.

Flag aliasing under discussion

The same application routing concept may support alternate flag spellings, such as --hlep mapping to --help, while leaving canonical flags and bindings unchanged. The user-facing API should be comparably simple to command aliases. Scope, token handling, registration, and help behavior need further discussion; no specific flag-alias API or resolution policy is selected here.

Open Decisions

OD-1: Public declaration and registration API

What are the exact alias declaration, path representation, and installation signatures? How do alias declarations compose with groups, reusable declarations, and later App.Register calls? What are the duplicate-declaration semantics?

OD-2: Prefix interactions and canonical reachability

How are collisions determined when alias sources or targets overlap canonical groups or runnable commands with children? How does longest matching interact with operand boundaries? Which later registrations conflict with existing aliases? How are ambiguous paths reported?

OD-3: Chains and group aliases

How do group aliases compose with more specific aliases and with aliases inside their target paths? At what boundaries is resolution repeated? How are cycles and nonterminating prefix expansion detected without confusing operands with command-path tokens?

OD-4: Help and discovery

How are aliases listed, grouped, and described in help? What happens when an operator requests a parent of an alias path that has no canonical group? How does group-alias help present descendants? How are entered and canonical paths shown in usage errors?

OD-5: Invocation identity

Does the public invocation API expose entered and canonical command paths? What identity is retained through a chain, and how is it represented for help and diagnostic presentation?

OD-6: Flag alias scope and composition

What is the flag-alias API and its installation scope? How does it compose with command aliases, canonical local flags, and built-in help? Which long and short flag forms are supported? How are values, --, chains, collisions, missing targets, help, and diagnostic spelling handled?