The per-user projects catalog at <config-dir>/projects.yaml maps component names to absolute paths. Component names are the shared currency of the cross-plan graph (<config-dir>/related-components.yaml); this catalog is the per-user resolver from name to path. It is auto-populated when ravel-lite run encounters a new project, and the verbs below let you inspect or edit it directly.

The densest surface in the CLI — every CRUD verb on backlog.yaml lives here. Read the State files reference for the file’s schema; this section documents the verbs that read or mutate it.

A few of the verbs warrant additional notes.

list filters compose with AND. Available filters: --status <name> (one of not_started, in_progress, done, blocked); --category <name>; --ready (shorthand for status=not_started AND every dep is done); --has-handoff; --missing-results (done tasks without a Results block). Output formats are yaml (default), json, and markdown. The markdown layout is sectioned by category by default; --group-by status switches to per-status sections.

list --format markdown is the canonical human-readable view used by the work-phase prompt at the start of each cycle. It deliberately does not include task ids — they bloated the table width. Phases that need ids derive them from titles via the deterministic allocate_id mapping or fall back to --format yaml.

set-results and set-description and set-handoff all accept either --body-file <path> or --body <text>. Pass --body - to read the body from stdin; pass any other string as the inline body. The two flags are mutually exclusive.

repair-stale-statuses is the recovery verb that analyse-work runs after every cycle. It catches the case where a phase wrote a Results block but forgot to flip the status, and the case where a blocked task’s blockers all completed. Exit code 1 means at least one repair applied — useful for scripts that want to detect drift before launching another cycle.

CRUD for memory.yaml. Dream uses these verbs per-entry rather than bulk-swapping the file, so a partial dream can be examined in git history.

The four memory entry types — user, feedback, project, reference — are conventions enforced by the memory-style.md guidance file (under <config-dir>/fixed-memory/), not by the schema. The CLI treats every entry uniformly. The State files reference covers the type semantics and when each one applies.

Read and write session-log.yaml (the append-only history) and latest-session.yaml (the single most recent record).

The split between the two files is load-bearing: latest-session.yaml is single-record and overwritten every cycle (so it can be read by the next phase without scanning the whole history); session-log.yaml is append-only and grows over the lifetime of the plan. The git-commit-work handler appends the latest record to the log between phases — that mirroring is mechanical Rust, not an LLM action, so a phase prompt cannot forget it.

Rewrite <plan-dir>/phase.md to the named phase. Validates the phase string against the enum and requires phase.md to already exist (so a typo cannot accidentally create a new plan dir).

Accepted phase names: work, analyse-work, reflect, dream, triage, git-commit-work, git-commit-reflect, git-commit-dream, git-commit-triage. A typo comes back with the full list in the error message.

Every reasoning phase ends with this verb to advance the cycle. Manual invocation is also supported — when recovering from a crash or replaying a phase, set phase.md directly to the phase you want to run next, then ravel-lite run will pick up there. The verb also seeds <plan-dir>/dream-word-count if missing, doubling as a defense-in-depth migration point for plans that pre-date the rename from dream-baseline.

The cross-plan graph at <config-dir>/related-components.yaml. Edges follow the component-ontology v2 schema; participants reference components by name (resolved per-user via the projects catalog). The Cross-plan files reference covers the file format, edge kinds, and evidence-grade vocabulary in detail.

Single-plan conversion of legacy .md plan-state files into typed .yaml siblings. Covers backlog.md, memory.md, session-log.md, and latest-session.md (each written when present).

Defaults: keep the .md originals; refuse to overwrite a differing backlog.yaml. --dry-run reports without writing. --delete-originals removes the .md files only after both write and validation succeed. --force overwrites a divergent existing backlog.yaml (use after manually reconciling).

This verb is for the one-time legacy upgrade path; new plans created via ravel-lite create start in the typed-YAML format and never need it.

Append-only verb used by Stage 2 of the discovery pipeline. Each proposal goes through add-proposal rather than the LLM writing the whole file at once; clap rejects a hallucinated --kind/--lifecycle/--evidence-grade so the LLM retries that single call instead of nuking everything.

Most users do not invoke this verb directly — it is wired into the discover flow. It surfaces here for completeness and because the validation contract (clap rejects unknown vocabulary terms; Edge::validate() rejects self-loops; the catalog check rejects unknown participants) is the same one users see if they invoke it during debugging.

Deterministic labelled-line summary of what changed in backlog.yaml (triage) or memory.yaml (reflect/dream) between a baseline commit and the current working-tree state.

Used at the end of each mutating phase to produce the structural diff that goes into the session log. Replaces the LLM’s manual re-transcription of its own tool calls — the narrative preamble stays in the LLM but the structural diff is computed in Rust.

--baseline "" (or omitted) means "first cycle, no prior state" — only additions are reported. The default text format is one labelled line per mutation (e.g. [ADDED] task-id: title); --format yaml is the structured form for machine consumers.