holocron/AGENTS.md

Working in this repo

This repo is 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.

Structure

• plugins/ — installable plugin units; each is an apm package (apm.yml + .apm/) carrying skills, agents, hooks, MCP servers, and bundled assets; install separately via claude plugin install <name>@holocron
• providers/claude-code/ — Claude Code adapter (deployed to ~/.claude/ via install.sh)

Edit .apm/, never the flat mirror

Inside a plugin, plugins/<name>/.apm/ is the only hand-edited content source. Everything else in a plugin root is generated:

• scripts/sync-plugin-content.sh generates the flat plugins/<name>/{skills,agents,commands,instructions,extensions}/ directories and the merged plugins/<name>/hooks/hooks.json (ADR-0017)
• apm pack generates both per-plugin manifests — plugins/<name>/.claude-plugin/plugin.json and plugins/<name>/.github/plugin/plugin.json — and two of the three root marketplace manifests: .claude-plugin/marketplace.json (apm's claude output profile) and .agents/plugins/marketplace.json (its codex profile, a differently-shaped file) (ADR-0015)
• scripts/sync-marketplace-mirror.sh generates the third, .github/plugin/marketplace.json — Copilot CLI's legacy manifest path. No apm output profile targets it: apm ships exactly two marketplace output profiles, claude and codex (documented in plugins/kyberforge/.apm/skills/apm-workflow/references/marketplace.md). The mirror is a byte-identical copy of .claude-plugin/marketplace.json, gated by the check-marketplace-mirror-sync pre-push hook. Do not expect apm pack to refresh it — that assumption is exactly the drift this pair exists to prevent

Nothing labels a generated file as generated — plugins/kyberforge/skills/forge/SKILL.md is byte-identical to its .apm/ original, with no marker in either. Check the path before you edit. An edit to the mirror is discarded by the next sync and is reported as drift by the check-plugin-content-sync pre-push hook, which is the earliest anyone finds out. Details in docs/spec/architecture.md.

Prefer plugin skills over raw shell

This repo dogfoods its own plugins. Before shelling out to git, gitea, or lint tooling directly, check whether an installed skill already owns the operation — it usually does:

• Commits, branches, history, worktrees, remotes → git:git-commits, git:git-branches, git:git-history, git:git-worktrees, git:git-remotes
• Pre-commit hook install/config/troubleshooting → git:pc-run / git:pc-author
• Issues, PRs, labels, milestones → gitea:gitea-issues, gitea:gitea-prs, gitea:gitea-labels-milestones; also gitea:gitea-branches, gitea:gitea-files, gitea:gitea-releases, or gitea:gitea-workflow when the domain is ambiguous
• Vale prose linting → lint:vale-config / lint:vale-run
• This repo's own AGENTS.md → core:agentsmd-author / core:agentsmd-audit

Fall back to raw shell only when no skill covers it.

Setup and testing

• Install git hooks via git:pc-run, wiring all three stages — this repo's .pre-commit-config.yaml has no default_install_hook_types, so a plain install silently skips commit-msg (Conventional Commits) and pre-push (the 12-hook gate described below).
• Install the apm CLI — four pre-push hooks shell out to it: apm-marketplace-check, apm-audit-ci, apm-pack-check-clean, and check-plugin-content-sync (via scripts/sync-plugin-content.sh, which wraps apm pack). The first three are bare apm … hook entries, so without it the push dies with an unhelpful "command not found". Use kyberforge:apm-install, or curl -sSL https://aka.ms/apm-unix | sh; verify with apm --version.
• Install jq — required by scripts/check-manifests.sh and scripts/sync-plugin-content.sh, both pre-push. These at least fail loudly (Error: jq is required but not installed).
• Install the vale binary — required by the vale-audit-prefilter-skill/-agent pre-commit hooks. Their files: patterns are .apm/-scoped: ^plugins/[^/]+/\.apm/skills/[^/]+/SKILL\.md$ and ^plugins/[^/]+/\.apm/agents/[^/]+\.agent\.md$. Only the authoring source triggers them — a SKILL.md in the generated mirror matches neither pattern, so prose findings surface only when you edit the file you are supposed to be editing. Without the binary the hooks fail with a bare "command not found" and no install pointer. brew install vale (macOS), snap install vale (Linux), choco install vale (Windows), or see https://vale.sh/docs/vale-cli/installation/. No vale sync needed — the Kyberforge styles are committed under plugins/kyberforge/.apm/skills/{skill-audit,agent-audit}/assets/vale/styles/, not downloaded packages (see ADR-0014).
• Run bash tests/run-tests.sh before considering any change done — it runs every test-*.sh script in the repo plus the bats suite (--bats-only for just bats). First run auto-initializes the bats submodules; no manual git submodule update needed.
• Pushing runs 12 repo-defined pre-push hooks, not just the test suite — run-tests and check-manifests, plus generated-content drift gates (check-plugin-content-sync, check-marketplace-mirror-sync, check-vale-style-sync, check-scope-walkup-sync), apm's own gates (apm-marketplace-check, apm-audit-ci, apm-pack-check-clean), host validators (validate-plugins, validate-marketplace, both needing the claude CLI), and check-release-needed. Run pre-commit run --hook-stage pre-push --all-files locally — one command, the whole gate. That command reports 14, not 12: pre-commit's own meta hooks, check-hooks-apply and check-useless-excludes, declare no stages: and so run at every stage including this one.
• apm-marketplace-check needs the network. It resolves every marketplace.packages[] entry including the remote mattpocock-skills ref, and it is always_run, so an unreachable network hard-fails the push. --offline is not an escape hatch — it still exits 1 on that entry (No cached refs (offline)). To push without a network, skip that one hook using pre-commit's own mechanism: SKIP=apm-marketplace-check git push. Skip that hook alone — it is the only one whose failure mode is "no network". Every other pre-push hook is a real local check, and adding it to SKIP disarms it silently.
• Author commits with git:git-commits — it validates Conventional Commits (enforced at commit-msg) for you.

Key documents

Read CONTEXT.md at the start of every session in this repo.

Read these on demand:

• docs/spec/architecture.md — current directory structure, install pipeline, provider model
• docs/adr/ — architectural decisions; read before answering design questions or proposing structural changes
• docs/ai-constitution.md — full governance evidence base; read when a governance decision needs justification
• docs/research/ai-coding-factory/ai-coding-factory-principles.md — factory design rationale; read when implementing, auditing, or reviewing skills or factory structure
• docs/notes/factory-integration-decisions.md — decisions from the factory integration grill; read when making skill authoring or factory design decisions
• Governance rules are always in effect — core/instructions/governance.md (agent rules); docs/research/governance_principles/CONTROLS.md