Bring the practice to an existing codebase

Add the project template to a repo that already exists, review what it adds, and get its gate green.

Use this guide to start using the practice in a repo that you already have. The project template adds the gate, the git hooks, the lint and build config, and a seeded CLAUDE.md. It keeps the files that you already own.

Before you start

The practice is installed. See the Quickstart.
You have uv and a clean working tree on a new branch.
You have an environment file: the answers that all your repos share. Copy instances/example.yml from the practice repo to a place outside any repo, and fill in the secret command and the forge (onedev or github).

Steps

Run the template in the repo.
```
uvx --exclude-newer "7 days" copier copy --data-file <environment.yml> https://github.com/komputa-io/komputa-practice.git .
```
Copier asks about the project: its kind, its languages, and how many tenants and users it has now and later. The four tenant and user questions have no default. Each answer is a decision that the architecture rules read.
Review what it added. The template adds its files as new, untracked files. A file that it seeds once, such as README.md, CLAUDE.md or pyproject.toml, is left alone when you already have one. Read the diff before you commit:
```
git status --short
```
Run the full gate.
```
scripts/gate.sh --full
```
On a repo that has its own checks, the first run usually fails, and each failure says what to do. For example, on a Python repo with an old check.sh and no tests:
```
gate: python: pytest collected no tests
gate: check.sh is a second gate script; fold its checks into scripts/gate.local.sh and remove it
```
Fold your old checks into the gate. scripts/gate.sh is the only gate. Move each check of an old gate script into scripts/gate.local.sh, which the gate runs with full or fast. Then remove the old script, and the CI steps that call it. scripts/gate.md in your repo has the rules and an example.
Record the large files. The fast gate refuses a staged file over about 5,000 tokens. A file that is already over the cap goes in a baseline, and may shrink but never grow:
```
scripts/gate.sh --size-baseline
```
Check the CI file. The template seeds one for your forge: .onedev-buildspec.yml on OneDev, .github/workflows/gate.yml on GitHub. Each runs the full gate on every pull request into main and every push to main, split into one job per language when one image cannot hold every toolchain. If the repo already had a file at that path, the template left it alone: make it run scripts/gate.sh --full.
Open a pull request with the template’s files, the folded checks and the CI file. Merge it when the gate is green on its head commit.

Check it worked

scripts/gate.sh --full ends with gate: every check passed.
.copier-answers.yml is committed. It records the template version and your answers.

Keep it current

When the template has a new release, update the repo from inside it:

uvx --exclude-newer "7 days" copier update --data-file <environment.yml>

copier update merges the template’s changes into the files that it keeps in step, and leaves the seeded files alone.

Next steps

Build a change: your first pull request with the practice.
How it fits: what belongs in the practice, in a project repo and in your environment.