zdev area

Create and manage an area: one development objective, its brief, and its task queue. An area either belongs to an isolated branch or follows the project’s configured trunk.

Examples

Create an area on the current branch:

zdev area create greeting \
  --title 'Greeting command' \
  --objective 'Greet a named person from the terminal'

After its tasks are complete, close it:

zdev area close greeting

Create and close

zdev area create TAG --title TITLE --objective OBJECTIVE [--branch BRANCH | --trunk]
zdev area close AREA
zdev area reopen AREA

Creation writes area.toml, brief.md, TASKS.md, and an empty tasks directory under .zdev/TAG. Tags use lowercase letters, digits, and hyphens. By default, the checked-out branch owns the area. Use --branch for an explicit owner or --trunk to follow project trunk.

Closing requires an empty or exhausted task queue. Reopening preserves task states. See area lifecycle for completion and reopening.

Branches and parent areas

Form	Effect
zdev area bind AREA [BRANCH]	Bind to the named branch, or the current branch when omitted.
zdev area bind AREA --trunk	Follow the configured project trunk.
zdev area parent AREA PARENT	Use another area’s branch as the base.
zdev area parent AREA --remove	Return to project trunk as the base.
zdev area rebase AREA	Rebase the checked-out area branch onto its current base.
zdev area rebase AREA --continue	Continue after resolving and staging conflicts.
zdev area rebase AREA --abort	Restore the state before the managed rebase.

A new rebase requires a clean worktree. Read branch orientation and trunk areas before changing an area’s branch model.

Execution and research settings

zdev area profile AREA [HARNESS] [PROFILE] inspects or assigns an execution profile. Use --clear to remove the configured profile. Profile definitions are managed by config profile.

zdev area research AREA reads research settings. Add --from PATH to store validated JSON settings, or --from - to read standard input. This configures the policy without running an evaluator; research runs experiments.