Existing codebases

Onboarding code you already have, and handing authority over.

Most teams do not start from nothing. They have code, a CLAUDE.md that grew over months, a folder of ADRs and some requirement documents. This section is about bringing a project like that under Corpole without stopping work, and without pretending the existing code is automatically right.

Onboarding reads the codebase and proposes what it finds — modules, behaviours, decisions, questions, problems — as findings for people to confirm, correct or reject. Nothing binds until a person says so. Until a module has been reviewed, agents ask before changing it, or wait, depending on the tenant's setting.

Handover moves authority from the old sources to Corpole in tiers. In Shadow, Corpole is read but the repository still leads; in Shared, Corpole wins where it has an Authority record; in Full, Corpole is the only source and the old documents point to it. /corpole:handover inventories the sources and turns them into proposals.

Start with the onboarding guide if you have code but no requirements; start with the handover articles if you have rule files and documents you want to retire.

Articles in Existing codebases