Per Phase 1 audit at cowork/docs-overhaul-phase-1-audit-2026-05-04/.
README went from 457 lines to a target of 250 (operator decision in
Phase 1 conversation). Focus shifts from feature-catalog + landing-page
duplicate to "developer cloning the repo needs orientation + quickstart
+ entry points to docs."
What stayed:
- Logo + title + badges (~15 lines)
- Elevator paragraph + 47-day cliff context (3 paragraphs, compressed)
- Active-maintenance callout
- Documentation table — restructured from 22 entries linking to flat
docs/ to ~6 audience-organized rows linking through the new
docs/README.md navigation index
- Screenshots grid (4 tiles)
- "What it does" — compressed from 33 lines of prose to 8 capability
bullets, each linking to the canonical doc
- Architecture paragraph — compressed to one paragraph linking to
docs/reference/architecture.md
- Quick Start (Docker Compose, Agent install, Helm, container images)
- Examples table (5 turnkey scenarios)
- Development commands
- License paragraph
- Dependencies block
- Footer CTA
What got moved out:
- Cosign verification / SLSA / SBOM section (67 lines) →
docs/reference/release-verification.md (NEW). README links to it
in a 3-line "Verifying a release" section.
What got removed entirely:
- "Why certctl" + "Architecture" + "Security-first" + "Key design
decisions" prose walls — duplicated landing page + architecture.md +
security.md content. README no longer wades through 11 dense
paragraphs.
- "Supported Integrations" 4 sub-tables (Issuers / Targets / Protocols
/ Standards / Notifiers, ~80 lines of dense per-row marketing
copy) — content lives at docs/reference/connectors/index.md and
docs/reference/protocols/. README mentions counts ("12 issuers, 15
targets, 6 notifiers") with a single link.
- "Roadmap" section entirely — V1 + V2 history rotted fastest of any
section; replaced with implicit "see Releases + Issues for active
work" via the existing footer CTA.
- "What It Does" 10-subsection wall (33 lines) — replaced with the
8-bullet capability list, each linking to its canonical doc.
- CLI section (20 lines of inline command examples) — links to the
contributor docs.
- MCP Server section (30 lines of setup) — links to docs/reference/mcp.md.
New surface added:
- docs/reference/release-verification.md — moved cosign/SLSA/SBOM
procedure with one expanded "Why this matters" paragraph
explaining the keyless OIDC trust anchor.
Every docs/ link in the new README verified to resolve to an existing
file. Cross-references from other docs / certctl.io to the deleted
sections (if any) need follow-up Phase 11 sweeps.
shankar0123