diff --git a/docs/developer-guide/01-mental-model.md b/docs/developer-guide/01-mental-model.md
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+# Mental model
+
+The lifecycle the library runs for you, and the operations you implement to plug into it.
+
+## The managed-resource lifecycle
+
+You hand the reconciler a typed custom resource and an implementation of a few operations. On every reconcile the framework asks your code to **observe** the external world, then — based on what you report — **creates**, **updates**, **deletes**, or does nothing, persisting conditions and managing the finalizer along the way.
+
+```mermaid
+stateDiagram-v2
+    [*] --> Get
+    Get --> Paused: paused
+    Get --> Connect: active
+    Connect --> Observe
+    Observe --> Create: missing
+    Observe --> Update: drifted
+    Observe --> Delete: being deleted
+    Observe --> UpToDate: matches
+    Create --> [*]
+    Update --> [*]
+    Delete --> [*]
+    UpToDate --> [*]
+    Paused --> [*]
+```
+
+You implement the boxes; the library implements everything else — getting the object, the pause check, finalizer add/remove, the safety steps around creation, persisting conditions and status, and requeue timing. The full sequence is in [`02-architecture.md`](./02-architecture.md).
+
+## The operations you implement
+
+- **Connect** — build whatever talks to the external system for *this* resource (an API client, a Kubernetes client, …), typically reading credentials from a referenced secret. It returns the client the four operations below will use.
+- **Observe** — look at the external world and report two things: whether the resource **exists**, and whether it is **up to date**. It must not change the external resource. It may also report that it filled in some defaults (so the framework persists them) and, for debugging, a description of the drift it found.
+- **Create / Update / Delete** — make the external world match the desired state.
+
+The contract that keeps this safe:
+
+- **Idempotent and non-blocking.** The framework can re-run any operation, so create must tolerate an already-existing resource and delete a missing one.
+- **Observe is read-only on the outside world.** It can adjust the managed object's status in memory (the loop persists it), but it must not mutate the external resource.
+- **The framework persists conditions and status, not your code.** You report observations and errors; the loop writes the `Ready`/`Synced` conditions and updates status.
+
+> What "exists" and "up to date" mean is entirely yours to define — that's where a provider encodes how it compares desired state against the external system.
diff --git a/docs/developer-guide/02-architecture.md b/docs/developer-guide/02-architecture.md
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+# Architecture
+
+What the library provides, and how it sequences a reconcile.
+
+## What's in the box
+
+- **The reconciler** — the heart of the library: the loop, and the small set of operations a provider plugs into it.
+- **The resource model** — the shape a managed resource must have (its conditions live on its status, its list can enumerate its items), finalizer handling, and helpers to read credentials from secrets and config maps.
+- **Standard conditions and status types** — the `Ready` and `Synced` conditions and their reasons.
+- **Cross-cutting helpers** — rate limiters, controller options, a logging abstraction, optional telemetry, an errors helper, and a test toolkit (a mock client and comparison helpers).
+
+The event recorder comes from the shared Krateo libraries, not from this repo.
+
+## How the reconcile loop is sequenced
+
+The loop runs in a fixed order on every reconcile. The order is the important part — read it top to bottom:
+
+1. **Set timeouts** for the reconcile and for the external calls.
+2. **Get the managed resource**; a not-found is treated as "nothing to do".
+3. **Pause** — if the resource is paused, record a paused condition and stop.
+4. **Orphan fast-delete** — if the resource is being deleted and its policy says not to delete the external resource, just drop the finalizer and stop.
+5. **Create-incomplete guard** — if a previous create may have started without confirming, refuse to proceed (this prevents leaking an external resource).
+6. **Connect**, then **Observe**.
+7. **Creation grace period** — if the resource doesn't exist yet but was created very recently, wait and retry (tolerates eventually-consistent backends).
+8. **Delete path** — if being deleted and the external resource exists, delete it, then drop the finalizer once it's gone.
+9. **Add the finalizer** for live resources.
+10. **Create path** — mark the create as pending, create, then record success or failure.
+11. **Persist any defaults** Observe filled in.
+12. **Up to date** — record success and requeue after the poll interval.
+13. **Update path** — update, record success, requeue.
+
+Two behaviors run through nearly every step: conditions and status are **persisted after each branch**, and a **conflict is treated as a requeue, not an error** (so concurrent writers simply retry). Mirror that conflict handling in any custom finalizer or updater you add.
+
+> Constructing the reconciler requires the resource's kind to be registered in the manager's scheme — if it isn't, construction fails immediately rather than misbehaving later. Register your scheme before wiring the reconciler.
+
+## Management and deletion policies
+
+Two annotations on the managed resource let an operator narrow what the loop is allowed to do. They're set by whoever applies the resource, but they directly decide **which of your operations the loop actually calls** — so it matters when you're building a provider (don't assume your `Create` runs just because the resource is missing).
+
+**Management policy** — the annotation `krateo.io/management-policy` — gates the allowed actions:
+
+| Value | Observe | Create | Update | Delete |
+| --- | :---: | :---: | :---: | :---: |
+| `default` (when the annotation is absent) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
+| `observe-create-update` | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | — |
+| `observe-delete` | ✓ | — | — | ✓ |
+| `observe` | ✓ | — | — | — |
+
+`default` is full management. `observe` is the read-only case — the resource is owned by something else and the loop only observes it. Under any non-`default` value, the disallowed operations are simply never invoked, even if `Observe` reports the resource as missing or drifted.
+
+**Deletion policy** — the annotation `krateo.io/deletion-policy` — decides what happens to the *external* resource when the managed resource is deleted:
+
+- `delete` (the default when absent) — the external resource is deleted too.
+- `orphan` — the external resource is left in place.
+
+**How they combine on delete.** When the managed resource is being deleted, the loop deletes the external resource only when the management policy permits it **and** the deletion policy asks for it — concretely, when management is `default` and deletion is `delete` (the default), or when management is `observe-delete`. In every other case the external resource is orphaned. One subtlety to keep in mind: `observe-delete` deletes regardless of the deletion policy.
diff --git a/docs/developer-guide/03-building-a-provider.md b/docs/developer-guide/03-building-a-provider.md
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+# Building a provider
+
+The steps to stand up a provider on this library, using **core-provider** as the worked reference.
+
+## 1. Define the typed resource
+
+Define your custom resource so it fits the managed-resource shape: put the standard conditions on its status (and delegate the condition getters/setters to them), let its list type enumerate its items, and register it in a scheme. The provider supplies its own scheme registration — the library doesn't provide one.
+
+## 2. Implement the operations
+
+Implement **Connect** (build the client that talks to the external system for a given resource) and the four operations — **Observe**, **Create**, **Update**, **Delete** — following the contract in [`01-mental-model.md`](./01-mental-model.md). `Observe` reports whether the external resource exists and is up to date; the others make it so.
+
+## 3. Wire the reconciler into a manager
+
+Construct the reconciler for your resource's kind, passing your `Connect` implementation and options (timeout, poll interval, logger, recorder, metrics). Then register a controller for your resource, wrapping the reconciler with a rate limiter. core-provider does exactly this for its `CompositionDefinition`.
+
+## 4. Bootstrap the process
+
+Register your scheme **before** wiring the reconciler (construction fails fast if the kind isn't in the scheme), set up the controller options (concurrency, poll interval, the global rate limiter, and — if used — the telemetry recorder), and start the manager.
+
+## Testing
+
+The library ships a test toolkit so you can exercise the loop without a cluster: a mock Kubernetes client with per-method hooks, fakes for the managed resource, and comparison helpers for errors and conditions. You can also implement the operations inline for a table-driven test rather than building a full client. The library's own reconciler tests are the best reference for testing your implementation.
diff --git a/docs/developer-guide/04-equivalence.md b/docs/developer-guide/04-equivalence.md
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+# Equivalence: provider-runtime ⟷ unstructured-runtime
+
+> These two libraries deliberately implement the **same managed-resource lifecycle**. `provider-runtime` (this library) drives it for **typed** custom resources; `unstructured-runtime` drives it for **untyped** objects at a resource type chosen at runtime. This appendix lines them up so a change to one can be mirrored in the other. **If you change lifecycle semantics in one, mirror it in the other — divergence is a bug, not a feature.**
+
+This same appendix appears in the **unstructured-runtime** developer guide.
+
+## Concept map
+
+| Concept | provider-runtime (typed) | unstructured-runtime (dynamic) |
+| --- | --- | --- |
+| What you manage | a typed custom resource, registered in a scheme | untyped objects at a resource type chosen at runtime |
+| Operations you implement | Observe / Create / Update / Delete | the same four operations |
+| Per-resource setup | a **Connect** step builds a client for each resource | **none** — you register one client for the whole controller |
+| What Observe reports | exists, up-to-date, plus "defaults filled in" and a drift description | exists, up-to-date (minimal) |
+| How it's wired | a reconciler into a controller-runtime manager | a controller built directly on lower-level primitives — no manager |
+| Work queue | the manager's rate-limited queue | a local priority queue (de-duplicating, priority-aware) |
+| Concurrency | a max-concurrent-reconciles setting | a fixed number of workers — **no autoscaling** |
+| Finalizer | a configurable finalizer | a fixed finalizer name |
+| Conditions / status | standard conditions on the typed resource's status | the same conditions written onto the untyped object's status |
+| Standard conditions | `Ready` and `Synced`, with the same reasons | the same |
+| Pause | a paused annotation short-circuits to a paused condition | the same |
+| Create safety | pending / succeeded / failed create-tracking, plus a grace period | the same tracking |
+| Lifecycle policies | the loop may skip operations or orphan on delete | the same |
+| Type resolution | scheme / RESTMapper (compile-time types) | runtime pluralization |
+| Event recorder, logger | shared Krateo helpers | the same |
+| Origin | trimmed fork of crossplane-runtime's managed reconciler | the dynamic analog of the same lifecycle |
+
+## Invariants that must stay equivalent
+
+- **Branching from Observe** — missing ⇒ create; exists but drifted ⇒ update; otherwise mark success and requeue.
+- **Finalizer discipline** — add the finalizer before creating the external resource; remove it only after a confirmed delete.
+- **Create safety** — mark the create pending before doing it, record success or failure after, and refuse to proceed while a create is unconfirmed.
+- **Pause** — a paused resource short-circuits to a paused condition without touching the external resource.
+- **Conditions** — maintain `Ready` and `Synced` with the same reasons; the framework persists them, not your code.
+- **Idempotency** — operations must be idempotent and non-blocking, and a conflict is a requeue, not an error.
+
+## Where they legitimately differ (and why)
+
+- **The Connect step** exists only in provider-runtime — typed providers often build a per-resource client; the dynamic controller registers a single client instead.
+- **What Observe reports is richer** in provider-runtime (it also carries "defaults filled in" and a drift description); the dynamic side keeps the minimal two-signal form.
+- **The plumbing differs** — provider-runtime rides a controller-runtime manager; unstructured-runtime wires the lower-level primitives itself and brings its own priority queue.
+- **Concurrency** — a max-concurrent setting versus a fixed worker count (the dynamic side explicitly favors sharding over autoscaling).
+- **Type handling** — compile-time types versus runtime resolution of untyped objects.
diff --git a/docs/developer-guide/README.md b/docs/developer-guide/README.md
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+# provider-runtime — Developer Guide
+
+A contributor-facing guide to the library that gives Krateo's **typed** providers a managed-resource controller: implement a small set of operations, and the framework runs the reconcile loop.
+
+> Audience: engineers **building a provider on top of this library, or maintaining the library itself**. This guide explains *ideas and flows*, not line-by-line code. For product concepts, see [docs.krateo.io](https://docs.krateo.io).
+
+## What it is
+
+`provider-runtime` implements the **managed-resource controller pattern** for Krateo providers (core-provider, git-provider, github-provider, and others). A provider author defines a typed custom resource, implements a handful of operations, and wires a reconciler into a manager. The library owns the reconcile loop: finalizers, the safety steps around creating an external resource, the `Ready`/`Synced` conditions, pause, requeue and rate-limiting, and optional metrics.
+
+It is a **trimmed, rebranded fork of crossplane-runtime**, with Krateo-specific conventions (its own annotation prefix and finalizer, a shared event recorder) and the removal of crossplane's provider-config and connection-detail machinery. See [`01-mental-model.md`](./01-mental-model.md).
+
+> **Sibling library.** `unstructured-runtime` is the **dynamic/unstructured analog** of this library — the same lifecycle, applied to untyped objects at a resource type chosen at runtime. The two are meant to stay functionally equivalent; the mapping is in [`04-equivalence.md`](./04-equivalence.md).
+
+## Documents in this folder
+
+| Document | What it covers |
+| --- | --- |
+| [`01-mental-model.md`](./01-mental-model.md) | The managed-resource lifecycle and the operations you implement. |
+| [`02-architecture.md`](./02-architecture.md) | What the library provides, and how the reconcile loop is sequenced. |
+| [`03-building-a-provider.md`](./03-building-a-provider.md) | The steps to stand up a provider, using core-provider as the worked reference. |
+| [`04-equivalence.md`](./04-equivalence.md) | How `provider-runtime` and `unstructured-runtime` line up, concept by concept. |
+
+## See also
+
+- **Ecosystem overview (canonical)** — how Krateo Composable Operations fits together lives in the **core-provider** repo: `core-provider/docs/developer-guide/00-ecosystem-overview.md`.
+- **The exemplar consumer** — **core-provider** is the reference provider built on this library.