# CascadingDev (CDev)

**CDev** — short for *Cascading Development* — is a **Git-native AI–human collaboration framework** that automates documentation, discussion summaries, and code review directly within your repository.  
It lets you build self-documenting projects where AI assists in generating and maintaining feature discussions, design docs, and implementation plans — all version-controlled alongside your code.

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## ✨ Key Features
- **Git-Integrated Workflow** — every discussion, decision, and artifact lives in Git.
- **Cascading Rules System** — nearest `.ai-rules.yml` defines how automation behaves.
- **Stage-Per-Discussion Model** — separate files for feature, design, implementation, testing, and review.
- **Pre-commit Hook** — automatically maintains summaries, diagrams, and vote tallies.
- **Ramble GUI** — friendly PySide6/PyQt5 dialog for capturing structured feature requests.
- **Deterministic Builds** — a reproducible installer bundle you can unzip and run anywhere.

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## 🚀 Quick Start (Developers)

```bash
# 1. Create and activate a virtual environment
python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install --upgrade pip wheel PySide6

# 2. Build the installer bundle
python tools/build_installer.py

# 3. Test-install into a temporary folder
python install/cascadingdev-*/setup_cascadingdev.py --target /tmp/myproject --no-ramble