Name: Manual Interpretation (normative): No automation. Builds, tests, and releases are run by hand; the codebase has no machine-readable contract an agent could rely on.
L0 is the floor of the ladder, not an aspiration. At L0 everything that moves the code forward — building it, testing it, shipping it — happens because a person typed the commands and watched the output. There is no script an agent can call, no test it can run to know whether an edit broke something, and no documented contract that describes what the system expects.
L0 is not a pejorative. Plenty of prototypes, throwaway spikes, and brand-new repositories live here, and that is exactly where they should start. But any system that matters to a team or a user — and any system where an agent is meant to help — has to climb out of L0 before that help can be trusted.
Criteria at L0
L0 criteria are the absolute floor: the minimum machine-readable contract that makes any later automation possible. A repository earns L0 by passing ≥ 80% of the following, applicability-adjusted:
DOC-010— README present and substantiveCQV-010— Linter configured and runnableTST-010— Test framework presentBLD-010— Reproducible buildBLD-030— Lockfile committedSEC-010— No committed secretsSEC-020—.env*gitignored
How to climb to L1
The first step out of L0 is to capture the commands a human already runs in their head and put them in version control: a build script, a lint script, a deploy script. Once the actions are repeatable scripts — even undocumented ones that still assume a human at the keyboard — the repository has reached L1.