standards/AGENTS.md

# Standards — AGENTS.md

The home of my agent-operating standards **and** the live global fleet that serves them.
This repo is both the documentation of how any coding agent works in my repos and the
actual source of the global agents, commands, and `how-i-work.md` that every project
inherits. Edit here and every repo on this machine feels it.

For a human-facing tour of the four standards documents, read `README.md` — this file is
the agent-facing orientation and does not restate it.

> **Inbox check (this repo):** At session start, if `INBOX.md` has unchecked items tagged
> `(standards)`, surface them before proposing next steps; triage with `/triage`.

## What this repo is the source of

The global layer lives here and is wired into `~/.claude` by **directory symlinks**, so a
file added under `adapters/` is live immediately — no per-file linking:

- `~/.claude/commands` → `adapters/claude/commands/` — global slash commands (`/retrofit`,
  `/handoff`, `/full-eval`, `/capture`, `/triage`, `/roundup`, `/new-project`, `/design`).
- `~/.claude/agents` → `adapters/claude/agents/` — global subagents (reviewer, evaluator,
  security-auditor, doc-auditor, exerciser, researcher, janitor, portability-checker,
  start9-spec-checker, design-checker, onboarding-tester).
- `~/.claude/CLAUDE.md` → `how-i-work.md` — my universal preferences, loaded every session.
  (Distinct from this repo's *root* `CLAUDE.md`, which → `AGENTS.md`: same filename, different
  scopes — global preferences vs. this repo's orientation.)
- `~/.claude/statusline.sh` → `adapters/claude/statusline.sh` — the Claude Code CLI terminal
  status-line script (invoked by `~/.claude/settings.json`).

Because these are *global*, decisions here are never scoped to this repo alone. The test
for anything proposed ("should we adopt linters / hooks / CI?", "is this skill worth
building?") is **whether it's generally best-in-class across all the repos I build** — this
repo is just where that cross-repo standard is authored and stored.

## Layout

- `README.md` — human index of the four standards docs.
- `how-i-work.md` — universal preferences (served as `~/.claude/CLAUDE.md`).
- `portability.md` — the vendor-neutral / hot-swap protocol.
- `retrofit-playbook.md` — terminal runbook for moving a project's brain onto disk.
- `subagents-handbook.md` — designing and running delegated agents.
- `guides/` — **neutral substance**: the self-contained operating guide for each command
  and agent, written as plain prose any vendor's harness could follow. Also holds shared
  reference docs that aren't tied to one command — e.g. `placement.md` (where a new project
  should live), which `/new-project` and `how-i-work.md` both point at.
- `adapters/claude/{commands,agents}/` — **thin Claude wrappers**: frontmatter + a pointer
  to the matching `guides/` file. Substance never lives in a wrapper.
- `INBOX.md` — cross-project capture buffer for untriaged ideas/bugs (see below).
- `ROADMAP.md` — longer-term backlog for this repo (future agents, commands, standards).
- `STATUS.md` — latest cross-project roundup snapshot, overwritten + committed by `/roundup`
  each run (git history is the diff over time).

## Conventions when editing

- **Substance in `guides/`, machinery in `adapters/`.** To add or change what a
  command/agent *does*, edit its `guides/<name>.md`. The wrapper only carries frontmatter
  and the "read your guide, then follow it exactly; if you can't read it, stop — don't
  improvise" pointer. Match the existing wrappers exactly.
- **Portability first.** Knowledge lives in vendor-neutral files; vendor-named paths are
  relative symlinks into them. Full protocol in `portability.md`; the `portability-checker`
  agent verifies it.
- **Keep this file lean.** Whole-repo, every-session facts only. Subsystem detail goes in a
  guide. Near-term status goes in `## Current state` below; longer-term backlog in
  `ROADMAP.md`.
- Follow `how-i-work.md` for collaboration, git, and debugging defaults.

## The capture → triage → roadmap loop

A frictionless path from "random thought about some repo" to "on the right list," so ideas
stop scattering into phone notes:

- **`/capture`** appends one structured line to `INBOX.md` from *any* repo (you need not be
  in the target repo) and commits+pushes the standards repo so the note is durable. Capture
  is deliberately dumb and uniform — no routing decision at capture time.
- **`/triage`**, run *inside* a project, drains that project's `INBOX.md` items and routes
  each — `Current state`, the repo's `ROADMAP.md`, a guide, or discard — with your
  approval, then clears them from the inbox.
- **Inbox is upstream of every repo's ROADMAP.** ROADMAP is triaged, owned backlog for one
  repo; the inbox is the raw, cross-project buffer that feeds the ROADMAPs.

**Inbox-check line (the portable surfacing mechanism).** Every project repo's `AGENTS.md`
should carry this so any vendor's agent surfaces pending items at session start:

> **Inbox check:** At session start, if `~/Projects/standards/INBOX.md` exists, scan it for
> items tagged `(this-repo)` and surface them before proposing next steps; triage with
> `/triage`.

## Current state

- **Fleet built and live** — commands `/capture /triage /roundup /new-project /handoff
  /retrofit /full-eval /design`; subagents incl. `design-checker` (substance in `guides/`, thin
  wrappers in `adapters/claude/`, symlinked into `~/.claude`). The repo dogfoods its own standard.
  Finished-work detail (`/new-project` upgrade, `placement.md` verification, git-hygiene audit)
  lives in git log + ROADMAP items 5–7. Latest `/roundup` snapshot: `STATUS.md` 2026-06-16.
- **Design system shipped this session (ROADMAP item 8).** `/design` (main-thread) runs the
  round-trip → a vendor-neutral on-disk contract (`design/DESIGN.md` nine-section +
  `design/tokens.tokens.json` DTCG); `design-checker` (read-only subagent) audits a repo's UI
  against its own contract; `/new-project` scaffolds `design/` for user-facing projects. The
  on-ramp handles fresh / import / extract / refine with a document-vs-redesign posture and a
  **Phase-D learning loop** (Field notes accrete in `guides/design.md`). The guide is
  **vendor-agnostic about the harness** — Claude Design is the named default visual tool, not an
  assumption; the contract never depends on a proprietary export.
- **First live pilot ran end-to-end:** keysat backfill (import, document-as-is). Contract
  committed to `keysat-root` (`532229d`); the prior Claude Design system relocated to keysat's
  `design/_imports/` as provenance; `design-checker` produced a clean backlog (3 gold-as-fill /
  pill-radius blockers + token gaps) → in keysat ROADMAP **and** captured to `INBOX.md` (P2).
- Also this session: deleted `start-os` (it was a pristine external Start9 upstream clone — none
  of our work); fixed `premier-gunner`'s stale "set a real password" next-step (already set).
- **Onboarding-tester agent built (this session).** Global docs-only adopter agent
  (`guides/onboarding-tester.md` + wrapper, live via the `adapters/` symlink): walks a product's
  published docs as a literal newcomer, **never reading the product's source** (needing to is
  itself a finding), reports doc gaps (Blocker/Stumble/Nit + the one-line fix), and on a **fully
  clean run** emits a publishable "all it took was X, Y, Z" walkthrough for marketing. Generic;
  first target is keysat SDK integration (gate `proof-of-work` behind a license) under keysat's new
  least-privilege `merchant-onboard` scoped key (keysat commit `d5885d1`). **Pending:** wire the
  keysat-side harness (two disposable containers + key minting + docs-corpus URLs) and run it live —
  built next in a keysat session. ROADMAP item 9.
- **Next steps:** (1) **backfill design into recaps.cc / recap** — the extract→reconcile
  **Case B** path (organic aesthetic, no prior guidelines), the on-ramp not yet tested;
  (2) cross-repo quality-gate standard + `/harden` (ROADMAP item 1); (3) non-git-folder sweep
  under `~/Projects` (~13); (4) wire + run the keysat `onboarding-tester` harness (ROADMAP item 9).
- **Open:** a *fresh* Claude Design run is still needed to confirm what its export actually
  contains and tune Phase-C distillation — keysat was an import of a prior artifact, not a live
  export; the related Field-note seeds stay marked "confirm on first live run."
- Queued in `INBOX.md` for other repos' `/triage`: keysat design cleanup (P2),
  `ten31-transcripts` mini-retrofit, `ten31-database` networking-doc + oversized-icon items.