Onboarding

The first time you run Prevail, the vault is empty. Onboarding turns a few answers into a working set of domains — each with a state.md, a default manifest.json, and starter goals and skills.

It’s a two-step engine flow: recommend, then apply.

1. Recommend

echo '{ "answers": { "focus": "building ventures", "wants_health": false } }' \
  | prevail onboard recommend --json

The user’s free-form answers are read from stdin. The engine returns an OnboardingRecommendation — a proposed starter set of domains tailored to those answers (e.g. someone “building ventures” gets wealth + business; someone who said no to health doesn’t get health).

2. Apply

echo '{ "picks": ["wealth", "business"] }' | prevail onboard apply --json

You send the picks (names from the recommendation) on stdin. For each pick the engine creates <vault>/<name>/state.md plus a default manifest.json and starter goals/skills, and returns the Domain records that now exist.

Tip

onboard apply is idempotent — existing domains are left intact. Run it again to add more domains later; it only scaffolds what’s missing. This is the same “conservative and additive” posture as the rest of the engine.

After onboarding

Freshly-scaffolded domains start with a low Context Score and a full missing list — that list is your to-do path. Fill in state.md, set goals on the manifest, and watch the score climb. From there:

• Press n in the cockpit (or just mkdir a folder with a state.md) to add domains by hand — onboarding is a convenience, not the only way in.
• Set up scheduled briefings and heartbeat routines once a domain has substance.