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` + `onboarding-tester` (substance in
  `guides/`, thin wrappers in `adapters/claude/`, symlinked into `~/.claude`). Dogfoods its own
  standard. Latest `/roundup`: `STATUS.md` 2026-06-16.
- **`onboarding-tester` built this session (ROADMAP item 9), live.** Docs-only adopter agent: walks
  a product's published docs as a literal newcomer (never reading source), reports doc gaps, and on
  a fully clean run emits a publishable "all it took was X, Y, Z" walkthrough. First target: keysat
  SDK integration, **staged** — Stage 1 (Path 1, manual issuance under keysat's new `merchant-onboard`
  key, `d5885d1`) is **unblocked**, runs in a keysat session; Stage 2 (Path 2, buyer-pays on regtest)
  is **gated** on keysat's greenlit `payment_providers:write` scope + network gate + sandbox flag.
- **Design system (ROADMAP item 8) shipped** — `/design` → `design/DESIGN.md` + DTCG tokens;
  `design-checker`; `/new-project` scaffolds `design/`. Pilot: keysat import (Case A). **Done:**
  the first **Case B (Extract) run on recap** — document-as-is; it exercised the previously-untested
  extract→reconcile path, the contract was distilled, and the conformance cleanup shipped in two
  phases (recap app 0.2.161, 2026-06-17). Extract-phase Phase-D learnings landed in
  `guides/design.md`; cleanup-execution learnings in `guides/design-checker.md`. **Still open
  (decoupled):** a fresh Claude Design run to confirm export internals + tune Phase-C — deliberately
  kept out of the recap run.
- **Next steps:** (1) run the Stage-1 `onboarding-tester` harness in a keysat session (item 9);
  (2) cross-repo quality-gate standard + `/harden` (item 1); (3) non-git-folder sweep under `~/Projects` (~13).
- Queued in `INBOX.md` for other repos' `/triage`: keysat design cleanup (P2) + onboarding Path-2
  (P3); `ten31-transcripts` mini-retrofit; `ten31-database` networking/icon/intake; (standards)
  operator-onboarding agent (P3).