Background
The project has outgrown its name. "ost-tools" implied a narrow focus on Opportunity Solution Trees specifically, but the tooling now supports general context tree / strategy framework modeling across arbitrary schemas. The name is a misnomer and may limit discoverability and positioning.
This issue tracks the question of what to rename it to.
Why now
Working through the implications of John Cutler's framing of "context trees" as a distinct category of organizational entity (see #48), it became clear that this project has a precise and useful identity: infrastructure for building and validating context trees — the durable structures through which individuals and organizations map their opportunity landscape, strategy, and domain.
"ost-tools" doesn't communicate that. A rename would help the project better describe itself.
Options to explore
context-tree-tools
Directly adopts Cutler's third-category framing. Precise and accurate for the current scope.
- Pro: clear, descriptive, aligns with emerging vocabulary in the product strategy space
- Pro: "context tree" as a term is specific enough to select the right audience without being impenetrable
- Con: "tree" may not age well if the data model moves further toward graphs/networks (the tool already models DAGs, not strict trees)
- Con: three-word names are a bit long for a CLI tool
context-graph-tools / cxt
Acknowledges the graph/DAG reality more honestly.
- Pro: technically more accurate
- Con: "graph" is more technical and less relatable to the product/strategy audience
context-tools
Shorter, but loses precision — "context" alone is very broad.
Something else entirely
The project could move away from describing the data shape (tree/graph) and lean into the use case: strategy modeling, framework tooling, or similar. Open for suggestions.
Considerations
- The rename touches: repo name, npm package name, CLI binary name, env vars (
OST_TOOLS_CONFIG), docs, schemas ($schema URLs), and any downstream configs
- Since this is pre-1.0 and no backward compatibility is required, a clean cut is fine
- Related: any private extension repos should probably follow the same naming convention
Relates to
Background
The project has outgrown its name. "ost-tools" implied a narrow focus on Opportunity Solution Trees specifically, but the tooling now supports general context tree / strategy framework modeling across arbitrary schemas. The name is a misnomer and may limit discoverability and positioning.
This issue tracks the question of what to rename it to.
Why now
Working through the implications of John Cutler's framing of "context trees" as a distinct category of organizational entity (see #48), it became clear that this project has a precise and useful identity: infrastructure for building and validating context trees — the durable structures through which individuals and organizations map their opportunity landscape, strategy, and domain.
"ost-tools" doesn't communicate that. A rename would help the project better describe itself.
Options to explore
context-tree-toolsDirectly adopts Cutler's third-category framing. Precise and accurate for the current scope.
context-graph-tools/cxtAcknowledges the graph/DAG reality more honestly.
context-toolsShorter, but loses precision — "context" alone is very broad.
Something else entirely
The project could move away from describing the data shape (tree/graph) and lean into the use case: strategy modeling, framework tooling, or similar. Open for suggestions.
Considerations
OST_TOOLS_CONFIG), docs, schemas ($schemaURLs), and any downstream configsRelates to