Onboarding — New Engineer Path

Status: Canonical
Audience: Engineers, architects, AI engineers
Time: First week
Last updated: 2026-07-05

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Day 1 — Orientation

1. Read README.md and INDEX.md
2. Skim VISION/README.md
3. Clone workspace repos per development/WORKSPACE_MANAGEMENT.md
4. Run composer install and php bin/materialize-zaixos.php in your product consumer

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Day 2 — Architecture

1. ARCHITECTURE/overall-architecture.md
2. ARCHITECTURE/repository-map.md
3. PLATFORMS/README.md
4. PRODUCTS/README.md

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Day 3 — Engineering practice

1. ddd-rules.md
2. contract-rules.md
3. testing-philosophy.md
4. STANDARDS/documentation-quality.md

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Day 4 — AI stack (if applicable)

1. AI/README.md
2. PLATFORMS/PL-003-ai-runtime.md
3. AI/closed-loop.md

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Day 5 — First contribution

1. Pick a TUTORIALS/ guide relevant to your team
2. Read module doc for your bounded context in MODULES/
3. Run architecture tests: composer test:architecture or php artisan test --testsuite=Architecture

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Checklist

• [ ] I know the authority chain (GOVERNANCE/authority-chain.md)
• [ ] I know my product ID (PRD-xxx) and platform pins
• [ ] I know where ADRs live (ADR/README.md)
• [ ] I know freeze rules for my product

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Related

• developer-guide.md
• development/AI_DEVELOPMENT_ENVIRONMENT.md

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