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description: Validate the active spec.yaml against the Ironclad schema and refresh the inventory. Rarely needed manually — clad_create_feature already auto-syncs the inventory and clad check / clad done self-validate the spec, so do NOT run it as a reflexive pre-flight before those. Use it only after you have directly hand-edited a shard file (spec/features/*.yaml or spec.yaml). Activate only when the connected project contains spec.yaml or the user explicitly names Cladding; ignore ordinary requests in uninitialized projects.

Cladding sync

Run clad sync from the project root. The command:

• Loads spec.yaml (or its sharded form under spec/features/*.yaml).
• Validates against src/spec/schema.json (JSONSchema).
• Reports the feature count and any validation failures.
• Exits non-zero when the spec is invalid so CI can gate on it.

Spec must be valid before clad check, clad run, or any stage runner produces meaningful output. If sync fails, fix the reported issues first.

clad sync

When you actually need it (don't reflex-sync)

You rarely need to run this MANUALLY — and a reflexive "just-in-case" sync after every operation is wasted work (in an A/B measurement, 28 of 30 manual clad sync calls found nothing to fix). The inventory + validation are already maintained for you:

• clad_create_feature auto-syncs the inventory after each feature it writes (and rejects a malformed AC at creation), so you don't need to sync after creating features.
• clad check / clad done validate the spec themselves (drift stage), so you don't need to pre-sync before them — a real drift surfaces in that gate anyway.

Run clad sync only when you have hand-edited a shard file directly (Edit/Write on spec/features/*.yaml or spec.yaml), to refresh the inventory and re-validate that edit. Prefer clad_create_feature over hand-editing in the first place — then even this is unneeded.