# holocron

The global AI development configuration repository — the authoritative source for agent definitions, skills, workflows, and prompts across all projects. Built as a homelab tool intended to scale to professional environments.

Content ships as six installable plugins, each an apm (Agent Package Manager) package. This repo consumes its own plugins through apm, so the working copy runs the same released content every other consumer gets.

## Repo layout

| Path | What it holds |
| --- | --- |
| `plugins/` | Six apm packages — `bin`, `core`, `git`, `gitea`, `kyberforge`, `lint` — each carrying skills, and where relevant agents, hooks, and bundled assets |
| `providers/claude-code/` | Claude Code adapter, deployed to `~/.claude/` via `scripts/install.sh` |
| `core/` | Provider-agnostic always-on content — `core/AGENTS.md` and `core/instructions/` |
| `docs/` | Specs (`docs/spec/`), architectural decisions (`docs/adr/`), governance, research, and notes |
| `scripts/` | Install, sync, and check scripts used by the git hooks |
| `tests/` | `run-tests.sh`, `run-bats.sh`, the `test-*.sh` suites, and the bats submodules |

The six plugins:

- **kyberforge** — skills and agents for creating, maintaining, and managing a Claude Code / Copilot CLI plugin marketplace
- **git** — conventional commits, branches, history, submodules, worktrees, remotes, pre-commit hook authoring and running (`pc-author` / `pc-run`), and an interactive router (`git-workflow`)
- **gitea** — issues, pull requests, labels, milestones, releases, branches, files, and an interactive router (`gitea-workflow`)
- **core** — authoring and auditing a repo's `AGENTS.md` and the provider adapter files that defer to it
- **lint** — configuring and running linters
- **bin** — cross-cutting workflow skills not yet split into a focused plugin: research, documentation, TDD, prototyping, triage, diagnosis, architecture review, requirement grilling, compressed output (`caveman`), and re-orienting mid-task (`zoom-out`)

## Prerequisites

Install all of these before setting up. Each one is a hard dependency of a git hook or a script — several fail with an unhelpful "command not found" if missing.

| Tool | Why | Install |
| --- | --- | --- |
| `apm` CLI | Two pre-push hooks shell out to it (`apm-audit-ci` and `apm-pack-check-clean`) | The `apm-install` skill, or `curl -sSL https://aka.ms/apm-unix \| sh`. Verify with `apm --version` |
| `python3` + PyYAML | Required by `scripts/skill-size-check.sh` (the `skill-size-check` pre-commit hook), which reads folded YAML frontmatter | `python3` is usually present — pre-commit is itself a Python application. `pip install pyyaml` if the hook reports PyYAML missing |
| `vale` | Required by the `vale-audit-prefilter-skill` / `-agent` pre-commit hooks and the `check-vale-style-sync` pre-push hook | `brew install vale` (macOS), `snap install vale` (Linux), `choco install vale` (Windows), or https://vale.sh/docs/vale-cli/installation/ |
| `claude` CLI | Required by the `validate-marketplace` pre-push hook | Claude Code |

Two notes worth reading before you skip one:

- **PyYAML is a hard requirement, not an optional accelerator.** The hand-rolled fallback frontmatter reader was removed deliberately: a reader that mis-parses an unfamiliar scalar shape reports a clean pass on a file it never measured.
- **No `vale sync` is needed.** The `Kyberforge` styles are committed under `plugins/kyberforge/.apm/skills/{skill-audit,agent-audit}/assets/vale/styles/`, not downloaded packages (ADR-0014).

## Setup

Run these in order, from the repo root.

```bash
# 1. Deploy this repo's own skills and agents
apm install

# 2. Install the git hooks — all three stages
pre-commit install -t pre-commit -t commit-msg -t pre-push
```

**`apm install`** deploys the six plugins into `.claude/skills/` and `.claude/agents/`. Both are gitignored install output, *not* authoring source — `plugins/<name>/.apm/` remains the only place to edit. It needs the network and materializes `apm_modules/` (which stays gitignored).

**Git hooks** must be wired for **all three stages**. This repo's `.pre-commit-config.yaml` has no `default_install_hook_types`, so a plain `pre-commit install` silently skips `commit-msg` (Conventional Commits) and `pre-push` (the full gate) — the `-t` flags above are not optional. The `pc-run` skill handles this and the troubleshooting around it, if you would rather not remember the flags.

## Keeping the install current

The six dependencies in root `apm.yml` are unpinned against the default branch, so deployed skills go stale whenever anyone merges. kyberforge's `SessionStart` hook keeps the install current automatically on launch, rewriting `apm.lock.yaml` in the process — an unexplained modification to it after opening a session is expected, not a bug; commit or discard it deliberately. Mechanism and rationale: `docs/adr/0019-session-start-hook-keeps-the-apm-install-current.md`.

Note the difference between the two commands:

- `apm install` deploys from `apm.lock.yaml`. It does **not** pick up remote changes.
- `apm update` re-resolves refs. This is the command that pulls in a merged `.apm/` edit.

## Running tests

```bash
bash tests/run-tests.sh              # every test-*.sh script plus the bats suite
bash tests/run-tests.sh --bats-only  # just bats
```

The first run auto-initializes the bats submodules; no manual `git submodule update` needed.

A suite that exits 77 because a dependency is missing is reported as SKIPPED and does **not** fail an ad-hoc run. It *does* fail under `--strict` (equivalently `RUN_TESTS_STRICT=1`), which is how the pre-push hook invokes it — at pre-push, a skip means one of the prerequisites above is absent on this machine, and the gate would otherwise report success having run fewer suites than it appears to. The strict failure names each skipped suite and what to install.

## Before pushing

Run the pre-push gate locally in one command:

```bash
pre-commit run --hook-stage pre-push --all-files
```

One caveat: `check-release-needed` is a silent no-op under this invocation. It exits 0 unless
`PRE_COMMIT_REMOTE_BRANCH` is `refs/heads/main`, and pre-commit exports that only from the real
pre-push git hook during an actual `git push` — so the hook reports `Passed` having checked nothing.
Every other pre-push hook does run.

See [`docs/spec/gates.md`](docs/spec/gates.md) for what each hook enforces and why.

**Offline?** No pre-push hook needs the network: root `apm.yml`'s marketplace has no remote package entries (the last one, `mattpocock-skills`, was removed), so `apm-pack-check-clean` resolves everything from local sources. All pre-push hooks pass offline.

## Editing plugin content

`plugins/<name>/.apm/` is the only hand-edited source for plugin content — the root `marketplace.json` manifest is generated by `apm pack`, and a hand-edit there is reported as drift by `apm-pack-check-clean`. Hand-authored material that is not an `.apm/` primitive (`README.md`, `docs/`, `bin/`, `sources.md`) lives at the plugin root instead.

Full model, including what's exempt and why: [`docs/spec/architecture.md`](docs/spec/architecture.md).

## For external consumers

Consume the packages through apm, the way this repo does — declare them as `dependencies.apm` git+path entries against the holocron remote and run `apm install`. apm is the only supported install path.

## Where to go next

- [`AGENTS.md`](AGENTS.md) — the rules for AI agents working in this repo
- [`CONTEXT.md`](CONTEXT.md) — domain language; read at the start of every session here
- [`docs/spec/architecture.md`](docs/spec/architecture.md) — directory structure, install pipeline, provider model
- [`docs/spec/gates.md`](docs/spec/gates.md) — the enforcement gates in depth
- [`docs/adr/`](docs/adr/) — architectural decisions; read before proposing structural changes
- [`docs/VISION.md`](docs/VISION.md) — where this is going
- [`LESSONS.md`](LESSONS.md) — things that went wrong once and should not again