Make RACI matrices from text

raci Voyage Operations
roles
  Cap  red
  QM   orange
  Bos  yellow
  Nav  blue
  Crew gray

[Departure] teal
  Plot the course
    Heading, currents, weather window
    Cap: A
    Nav: R
    QM: C
  Provision the hold
    QM: A R
    Cap: C
    Crew: I

[At Sea] purple
  Stand the watch
    Bos: A
    Crew: R
  Sight the next port
    Nav: A R
    Cap: C

Overview

A RACI matrix maps tasks against roles and tags each cell with a marker indicating that role’s responsibility for that task. The raci chart type covers three variants — RACI, RASCI, and DACI — with author-time linting against the structural rules of each.

Variant	Marker alphabet	Constraint
RACI	`R A C I`	Exactly one Accountable per task
RASCI	`R A S C I`	Exactly one Accountable per task
DACI	`D A C I`	Exactly one Driver and one Approver per task

The variant is inferred from the markers used in the chart. An optional variant-* directive locks it explicitly.

Syntax

raci Title
[directives]                        // optional: roles, variant-*, palette, theme

[Phase Label] color                 // optional bracketed phase header + trailing-token color
  Task name                         // 2-space indent
    Optional description line       // 4-space indent, before any role line
    Role: <markers>                 // 4-space indent, space-delimited markers
  Another task
    Role: A R                       // combined-marker cell

Three-level indentation: phase → task → role assignment / description. Phase headers are optional; tasks without a phase are valid.

Variant resolution

The parser resolves the variant in this order:

Explicit lock. If a variant-raci, variant-rasci, or variant-daci directive is present, the chart locks to that variant.
Inference from markers. Any D → DACI. Any S → RASCI. Otherwise → RACI.
Mixed-marker conflict. If both D and S appear without a lock, fires E_RACI_MIXED_VARIANTS with a hint to add a variant-* directive.

The resolved variant is shown in the rendered chart’s header label.

Roles

Declare column order with the roles directive. Two equivalent forms:

roles Cap, QM, Bos                    // inline form (name-only)

roles                                 // block form — supports per-role color
  Cap red
  QM  orange
  Bos yellow

When roles is present, any role used in a task assignment that wasn’t declared emits the W_RACI_UNKNOWN_ROLE warning.

Per-role color uses the universal trailing-token form (Cap red) — same as cycle / pyramid / ring / boxes-and-lines layers. The inline form is name-only; to color roles, use the block form. The same-line form (Cap color: red) is also accepted, but reserve it for when another metadata key rides along.

Phase metadata

Phase headers accept a trailing-token color for per-phase styling:

[Departure] teal
[At Sea] purple

The phase bar tints to a soft mix of the color over the background. Phases without color fall back to a neutral gray bar.

Directives

Directive	Effect
`variant-raci`, `variant-rasci`, `variant-daci`	Lock the chart to a specific variant. Markers outside the alphabet error. At most one per chart.
`roles`	Declare column order (inline or block form). Required to enable the unknown-role warning.
`palette`, `theme`, `active-tag`	Universal options.

Display vs source ordering

Markers in cells are always rendered in canonical alphabet order (R A C I, R A S C I, D A C I) regardless of source order. Source casing and order are preserved in the file; mutations operate on source order to keep round-trips byte-stable except for the cell that changed.

Complete Example — DACI

raci Choose the next port
roles Cap, Nav, QM, Bos

  Pick destination
    Cap: D
    Nav: A
    QM: C
    Bos: I

  Decide departure window
    Cap: D
    Nav: C
    QM: A
    Bos: I

The D markers infer DACI without a variant-* directive. To lock the variant explicitly (for empty/sparse charts, or to catch a typo’d marker that would otherwise flip inference), add variant-daci after the title line.