Files
holocron/docs/spec/architecture.md
Defame1297 bd2bf667c5 docs: restore two guard-rails the trim dropped
Why: 1929ffd and b9c7762 preserved every constant, hook ID and error string,
but two don't-re-litigate notes were lost. Both were guard-rails — they fired
from preloaded context, before the mistake. Restoring the sentence to an
on-demand spec doc restores the text without restoring the function, since an
on-demand file is opened after a plan is formed, not before.

Implementation notes: placed by when each note must fire, not by what it is
about.
- "Do not expect `apm pack` to refresh the .github/plugin/marketplace.json
  mirror" now lives in the DRIFT failure message of the script and hook that
  already catch that exact mistake. It costs no preloaded tokens, fires at the
  moment of the error, and cannot be missed. No test asserts on that message;
  --check and shellcheck both pass.
- Plugin self-containment has no gate that fires on it, so it goes in
  architecture.md's Plugin model beside "self-contained plugin units", stated as
  the constraint it is rather than a description, with the two consequences that
  make it load-bearing: the duplicated Vale styles (ADR-0014) and ADR-0020's
  constants copied into three validators.

Impact: the every-session set is unchanged — neither note returns to AGENTS.md.
2026-08-17 10:10:55 +00:00

84 lines
10 KiB
Markdown

# Architecture
## Layered model
```
this repo (global defaults)
└── scripts/install.sh → ~/.claude/ (Claude Code config + content)
project repo (local overrides)
└── .claude/settings.json, CLAUDE.md (overrides global)
```
## Content deployment model
`scripts/install.sh` is a **deployer**, not a composer. It sources `scripts/deploy-manifest.sh` and deploys three categories:
- **Files** (`DEPLOY_FILES`): `providers/claude-code/CLAUDE.md` → `~/.claude/CLAUDE.md`; `providers/claude-code/settings.json` → `~/.claude/settings.json`; `core/AGENTS.md` → `~/.agents/AGENTS.md`
- **Executables** (`DEPLOY_EXECUTABLES`): `providers/claude-code/statusline-command.sh` → `~/.claude/statusline-command.sh` (with `+x`)
- **Directories** (`DEPLOY_DIRS`): `core/` → `~/.claude/core/` (destination fully replaced on each deploy)
Skills are **not** deployed by `install.sh`. They are distributed as plugins and installed separately — in this repo by `apm install` against the `dependencies.apm` entries in the root `apm.yml`, which lands them in `.claude/skills/` and `.claude/agents/` (ADR-0018); elsewhere by `claude plugin install <name>@holocron`.
`~/.claude/CLAUDE.md` is a thin adapter, not a content source. It imports `~/.agents/AGENTS.md` (always-on rules) and `governance.md` (always-on governance) and carries nothing else — the content index of on-demand instruction files sits in `core/AGENTS.md`, deployed beside it. All always-on content lives in `AGENTS.md` files so other providers can import the same source without duplication.
## Plugin model
Skills, agents, MCP servers, and hooks are distributed as self-contained plugin units under `plugins/`, installed independently — via `apm install` here, or `claude plugin install <name>@holocron` for a host consuming the marketplace natively (ADR-0018). Self-contained is a hard constraint, not a description: a plugin is copied to a cache on install, so nothing inside it may reference a file outside its own directory. That is why the Vale styles are duplicated across two skills rather than shared (ADR-0014), and why ADR-0020's constants are copied into three validators rather than sourced from one. Each plugin is an **apm package**: `plugins/<name>/apm.yml` plus a hand-authored `plugins/<name>/.apm/{skills,agents,hooks,commands,instructions,extensions}/` tree (ADR-0015). There is no hand-maintained `plugin.json` — every manifest and every host-visible content directory is compiled from that source.
Which plugin a new skill belongs in follows from what each one is scoped to. The boundary that matters most in practice is `core` vs `kyberforge`: `core` is the home for cross-cutting, repo-agnostic utility skills that a consumer would want against *their* repo, while `kyberforge` is meta-tooling for the holocron marketplace itself. A skill that authors a target repo's `AGENTS.md` is `core`; a skill that audits a `SKILL.md` against this marketplace's contract is `kyberforge`.
| Plugin | Scope |
|---|---|
| `core` | Authoring and auditing a repo's `AGENTS.md` and the provider adapter files that defer to it |
| `git` | Conventional commits, branch management, history, worktrees, remotes |
| `gitea` | Issues, pull requests, labels, milestones, releases, wikis |
| `kyberforge` | Creating and maintaining a Claude Code / Copilot CLI plugin marketplace — this repo's own meta-tooling |
| `lint` | Configuring and running linters; repo-agnostic, first linter is Vale (`vale-config` / `vale-run`, plus the `lint-runner` agent) |
| `bin` | Unsorted skills that have not earned a home yet |
Two compilers produce the plugin roots you see in the tree:
- **`apm pack` compiles the manifests** (ADR-0015). Per plugin: `.claude-plugin/plugin.json` and `.github/plugin/plugin.json`, both generated from `plugins/<name>/apm.yml`. Repo-wide, from the root `apm.yml`'s `marketplace:` block: `.claude-plugin/marketplace.json` (apm's `claude` output profile) and `.agents/plugins/marketplace.json` (its `codex` profile, a differently-shaped file). Those two are the only marketplace outputs apm has profiles for — the third root manifest, `.github/plugin/marketplace.json` (Copilot CLI's legacy path), is a byte-identical mirror of the Claude one maintained by `scripts/sync-marketplace-mirror.sh` and gated by the `check-marketplace-mirror-sync` pre-push hook.
- **`scripts/sync-plugin-content.sh` compiles the content mirror** (ADR-0017). It wraps `apm pack --format plugin` and copies the resulting bundle's flat `agents/`, `skills/`, `commands/`, `instructions/`, `extensions/`, and merged `hooks/hooks.json` back to the plugin root. Claude Code's installer convention-scans those flat paths and has no `.apm/` awareness whatsoever, so the mirror exists solely to satisfy the host's discovery contract.
`.apm/` is the sole hand-edited authoring source for plugin content. An edit made in the flat mirror is discarded by the next sync and is reported as drift by the `check-plugin-content-sync` pre-push hook. Hand-authored material that is not an `.apm/` primitive — `README.md`, `docs/`, `bin/`, `sources.md`, `.mcp.json`, and per-plugin extras such as `plugins/git/config.example.json`, `plugins/gitea/references/` and `plugins/bin/evals/` — lives at the plugin **root** and is untouched by either compiler.
That immunity is positional, not by filename. Anything placed *inside* a mirrored directory is destroyed regardless of what it is: `sync_dir` runs `rm -rf "$dst"` before every copy, and `sync_hooks_json` does the same to `hooks/`. A hand-written `README.md` under `plugins/<name>/hooks/` or `plugins/<name>/skills/` is deleted by the next sync with no drift report, because a file with no `.apm/` counterpart is simply absent from the regenerated tree. This has already cost the repo one document — `plugins/kyberforge/hooks/README.md`, since restored to `plugins/kyberforge/docs/hooks.md`. Plugin-root documentation belongs in `docs/`.
## Governance layer
`core/instructions/governance.md` is the always-on governance instruction file. Unlike the on-demand instruction files in the content index, governance.md is loaded into every Claude session via `@import` in `providers/claude-code/CLAUDE.md`. This is a technical guarantee, not a behavioural instruction — `@import` causes Claude Code to expand and load the file at launch, before any interaction begins.
Those on-demand files are plain markdown — no frontmatter, no schema. The agent decides when to read each one from task context and the content index label alone. Frontmatter is deferred until there is evidence that agents are loading the wrong files in practice; it is a deliberate deferral, not an oversight to close.
The governance layer has two phases:
- **Phase 1** (complete): instruction and documentation layer — `governance.md` loaded via `@import`; `docs/ai-constitution.md` and `docs/wiki/HUMANS.md` as human-facing reference; `CONTEXT.md` extended with governance domain language.
- **Phase 2** (planned): deterministic enforcement layer — pre-commit hooks, CI gates, secret scanning, licence scanning. Specified in `docs/research/governance_principles/CONTROLS.md`.
## AGENTS.md pattern
This repo uses two `AGENTS.md` files as the provider-agnostic source of always-on rules (ADR-0003):
- **Repo-level `AGENTS.md`** — instructions for agents working inside this repo (structure, key rules). Imported by repo `CLAUDE.md` via `@AGENTS.md`.
- **Global `core/AGENTS.md`** — Communication and Behavior rules that apply across all projects. Deployed to `~/.agents/AGENTS.md`; imported by `~/.claude/CLAUDE.md` via `@~/.agents/AGENTS.md`.
Both `CLAUDE.md` files are thin adapters: they import from their respective `AGENTS.md` and add only Claude Code-specific syntax (`@import`, content index paths). They carry no original always-on content.
This repo also has a `CLAUDE.md` at its root — the Claude Code entry point for working in this repo. It imports `AGENTS.md` and nothing else; there is no `@CONTEXT.md` import. It is not import-only either: below the import sits a fenced `<!-- rtk-instructions v2 -->` … `<!-- /rtk-instructions -->` block carrying the RTK command-prefix convention, which is tool-specific content with no `AGENTS.md` source. This is distinct from `providers/claude-code/CLAUDE.md`, which is the global config deployed to `~/.claude/`.
`CONTEXT.md` is therefore **not** always-loaded. `AGENTS.md` instructs agents to read it at session start, which is a behavioural instruction, not an `@import` guarantee — `LESSONS.md`'s 2026-05-17 entry proposed adding the import and it was never applied. Treat that entry as open work rather than a record of a landed change.
## Reference conventions
The stated convention is that files referencing other files declare those references explicitly: the referencing file carries the forward reference (the content index in `core/AGENTS.md`, `references:` in frontmatter), the referenced file carries a `when:` field describing when it is loaded, and divergence between the two signals staleness. It is aspirational, not a description of the repo today — no file under `core/instructions/` carries frontmatter at all, `when:` appears in two of the 39 skill sources under `plugins/*/.apm/skills/`, and the reference scanner script meant to derive the reverse map ("what files reference this file?") does not exist; `docs/notes/skill-implementation-workflow.md` still lists it as unbuilt work. Treat it as intent for instruction files, skills, and workflow documents, not as a rule the repo enforces.
## Provider model
`core/` is never tool-specific. `providers/` is never shared. When adding a new provider, write an adapter in `providers/<name>/` that translates core content into the tool's expected format and location. The core content itself does not change.
## Architectural decisions
Key hard-to-reverse decisions are recorded as ADRs in `docs/adr/`. There is no index file — the directory holds 20 numbered ADRs whose filenames state their decision, so `ls docs/adr/` is the index. Read a superseding ADR before the one it supersedes: ADR-0015 (apm as the authoring source of truth) supersedes ADR-0001 and moots ADR-0006, ADR-0017 corrects ADR-0015's host-discovery gap, and ADR-0019 supersedes one claim in ADR-0018 (that `.claude/settings.json`'s committed content is exactly `{"hooks": {}}`) while keeping the rule behind it. Entry points for the structure described on this page: ADR-0002 (two-tier CLAUDE.md), ADR-0003 (AGENTS.md as the provider-agnostic entry point), ADR-0015 and ADR-0017 (the two compilers behind the plugin roots).