# AGENTS.md — the kettle CLI `kettle` is a globally installed binary, and **it is the whole product**. There is no plugin any more: it owns this project's connection to its tracker — the credentials, the transport, the payload scratchpad — and it owns the documents an operator and a model read, which it writes into `.claude/` and which are embedded in it. Issues are its main subject and no longer its only one: what an issue is, where the store lives, who this machine is, how issues move to and from Gitea, and, through `kettle api`, every other Gitea entity that has no command of its own. That is a widening, three times over, and it is worth being straight about each. "Issues and nothing else" was the line until `cmd/release` crossed it (publishing this repository's own releases), then `kettle api` (because the alternative was requiring `tea` — a second CLI with a second set of logins nothing here could see, documented in 400 lines of somebody else's flag reference nothing here could check), and then `kettle mirror` (141 lines of Python that used to be a plugin hook and had nowhere to live once the plugin went). One rule made all three: **a binary holds what can be enforced.** Every one of them was mechanical, and every one of them was somewhere a test could not reach. What has *not* widened is the domain — `internal/issue` still knows nothing about trackers, `api` is transport plus a command, and `mirror` and `scaffold` import nothing at all. **This file is the binary's map.** Each package documents its own rules in its own directory; nothing below is repeated there and nothing there is repeated here. ## Why a binary, and then why no plugin Three failures in the Python version were failures of *runtime*, not of logic: - the store resolved from `__file__`, so it landed inside a versioned plugin cache and issues written from one project were invisible from the next; - the walk that answers "which directory is the project" was written three times — store, login pin, guard hook — and in a linked worktree the three disagreed; - `sys.path.insert` was the import mechanism, so the layering rule was a convention checked by grep. A compiled binary answers all three by construction. There is one walk ([`internal/project`](internal/project/AGENTS.md)), it is imported rather than re-derived, and the layering rule is a build graph a test walks. A fourth failure survived that migration and outlived it by a year. The plugin shipped the skills; **nothing on an operator's machine ever checked that the plugin they had installed described the binary they had installed.** The generated block existed precisely so a renamed flag could not ship with documentation recommending the old one — and then shipped one version behind the registry it was generated from, which is the same bug one hop downstream. So the documents moved inside the binary ([`internal/scaffold`](internal/scaffold/AGENTS.md)) and `kettle gen scaffold` writes them into a project. Prose that travels inside the binary cannot be a version behind it. What that cost is worth naming rather than glossing: the marketplace was discovery, and a README URL is not a shop window. The `/kettle:…` prefix came free from the plugin and had to be rebuilt out of a `commands/kettle/` subdirectory. Both were paid knowingly — a document describing the wrong binary is worse than one nobody found. ## Layers Knowledge flows one way. The arrow means "imports"; follow a name to that package's own AGENTS.md. ``` cmd/kettle thin main; exit status only cmd/release build infrastructure, not a kettle verb — see its own file internal/cmd the command tree: flags, receipts, exit codes │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ ├─────► internal/scaffold the documents written into .claude/, │ │ │ │ │ embedded. Imports nothing. │ │ │ │ └─────► internal/mirror AGENTS.md ⇄ CLAUDE.md, seven │ │ │ │ branches. Imports nothing. │ │ │ └────────► internal/config who this machine is, what this │ │ │ project points at; yaml lives here │ │ │ and only here │ │ └────────────► internal/gitea TRANSPORT: one door for every │ │ │ request, pagination, payload dumps, │ │ │ the number -> slug ledger │ │ ▼ ├──┼──────────────────► internal/wire ADDRESSES: Repo and Key, and the │ │ ▲ parsing that reads them. Imports │ │ │ nothing. └──► internal/mapping ──────┘ BRIDGE: md <-> the SDK's payloads, │ no I/O; label colours live here ▼ internal/issue DOMAIN what an issue is: format, taxonomy, validation, │ checkboxes, dependency graph, the store, eviction │ offline — no tracker, no network, no JSON ▼ internal/project ROOT which directory is the project, and every path resolved from it: store, payload, config, scaffold depends on nothing ``` Three packages at the bottom depend on nothing — `project`, `wire`, and now `mirror` and `scaffold` beside them. The last two are there for a reason pointing outward rather than inward: `mirror` walks any directory on any machine, and `scaffold`'s documents must exist wherever the binary does. One import of `internal/config` in the first, or one `os.ReadFile` in the second, and each stops being the thing it is for. | package | layer | what its own file opens with | |---|---|---| | [`cmd/kettle`](cmd/kettle/AGENTS.md) | entry point | `os.Exit(cmd.Main(os.Args[1:]))`, and why there is nothing else in it | | [`cmd/release`](cmd/release/AGENTS.md) | build tool | why publishing a release is not a `kettle` verb, and why it goes around the transport | | [`internal/cmd`](internal/cmd/AGENTS.md) | commands | the registry every command is a value in, and the generator that writes a project's documents from it | | [`internal/config`](internal/config/AGENTS.md) | configuration | two files, and why the tokens are not in the one inside the repository | | [`internal/gitea`](internal/gitea/AGENTS.md) | transport | the SDK, the payload scratchpad, the ledger, the dependency endpoint | | [`internal/mapping`](internal/mapping/AGENTS.md) | bridge | md ↔ payload, the id marker, label colours, the checkbox merge | | [`internal/wire`](internal/wire/AGENTS.md) | addresses | `42`, `#42`, `owner/repo#42`, a URL — four spellings of one thing | | [`internal/issue`](internal/issue/AGENTS.md) | domain | the format, the taxonomy, the store, eviction — all of it offline | | [`internal/scaffold`](internal/scaffold/AGENTS.md) | documents | the commands, skills and subagent written into `.claude/`, and why they are not a plugin | | [`internal/mirror`](internal/mirror/AGENTS.md) | filesystem | one invariant per directory, seven branches, one refusal | | [`internal/project`](internal/project/AGENTS.md) | root | the walk, and every path resolved from its answer | The rules that hold the layers apart, and the eleven tests that fail when one breaks, are in [`internal/AGENTS.md`](internal/AGENTS.md). Read the diagram bottom-up: each layer knows strictly less about trackers than the one above it. ## Dependencies, and building `gopkg.in/yaml.v3`, `code.gitea.io/sdk/gitea` and `golang.org/x/term` — eight modules once the SDK's own are counted, and the third of those was already among them before anything here imported it. It became direct for one prompt: `term.ReadPassword`, so an operator typing a token at `kettle init --interactive` leaves it in no history, no file and no scrollback. No cobra: commands are values in a registry, which is what lets a project's skills be generated from the same struct that holds the code. ```bash make install # build straight onto your PATH, version stamped make install BINDIR=$(go env GOPATH)/bin go build -o ~/.local/bin/kettle ./cmd/kettle # the same thing, unstamped go install git.noodles.cam/claude-skills/marketplace/cli/cmd/kettle@latest ``` **`make` is the build, and it is also the CI.** There is no act_runner on the instance this lives on and none is planned, so nothing runs on a push: `make check` — fmt, vet, test, `go mod verify`, build, `gen scaffold --check` — is the only thing standing between a mistake and the tracker, and it is on whoever is committing to run it. `make help` lists the rest; `make dist` cross-compiles four platforms with a `SHA256SUMS`, and `make release TAG=v1.2.3` publishes them through [`cmd/release`](cmd/release/AGENTS.md) after refusing a dirty tree, a `TAG` that is not what `git describe` reports, and a tag the remote does not have. A hand build says `dev` for `kettle version` and means it: a binary out of somebody's working tree is not a release and must not claim to be one. The version is stamped at link time into `internal/cmd.Version`, derived from `git describe` rather than kept in a file — a number somebody has to remember to bump is a number that will be wrong. **`go.mod` says `go 1.26`**, which the SDK requires, and **`vendor/` is committed** — 281 files, 2.3 MB, which is the price of knowing exactly what compiled. Be precise about what that buys, because it is easy to overclaim: vendoring pins the *contents* of every dependency in this repository's own history, so a dependency that is retagged, yanked or unreachable cannot change what this binary is built from. It does **not** by itself give a network-free build. `go 1.26` in `go.mod` means `GOTOOLCHAIN=auto` fetches a toolchain over the network on any machine whose local Go is older, which is most of them. If an air-gapped build is ever a requirement, pin the toolchain too — vendoring alone will not get you there. `make check` runs both halves: `go mod verify` says the module cache matches `go.sum`, and `go build -mod=vendor ./...` says the committed tree is complete and is what actually compiles. A `vendor/` that has drifted from `go.mod` fails nothing until somebody builds with a cold cache, which is exactly when nobody wants to find out. The transport is the official SDK rather than hand-rolled `net/http`. What that bought: the payload shapes are one vocabulary maintained by the people who maintain the server, and the instance's version arrives for free, which is what lets the transport answer "does this instance have issue dependencies?" from the version instead of guessing from a status code. What it cost is written down where it happened — see [`internal/gitea`](internal/gitea/AGENTS.md) and [`internal/mapping`](internal/mapping/AGENTS.md). The SDK is imported as `sdk` everywhere, so one type has one spelling across the tree. ## The round trip `push` and `pull` are the two halves of one rule, and the rule is that **the store holds what has not left this machine.** A successful push deletes the local file — on `--update` too, one rule with no exception — and only after the tracker confirms the write and the number → slug ledger is written. A pull is how the copy comes back, under the same slug, on a machine that has never seen it. The mechanics of each half live with the commands that implement them, in [`internal/cmd`](internal/cmd/AGENTS.md); the ledger that survives the deletion is [`internal/gitea`](internal/gitea/AGENTS.md)'s, and the marker that survives a lost ledger is [`internal/mapping`](internal/mapping/AGENTS.md)'s. ## No guard hook (and the one hook that stayed) The Python version needed a `PreToolUse` hook to block any `tea` command that would run under a login the model picked instead of the operator. That whole apparatus is gone. The binary holds its own credentials and reads the login out of the project's own configuration, so there is no argument to police and no way for the transport and the guard to disagree — the failure the hook existed to catch is not expressible any more. `kettle api` did not put it back: it takes an endpoint and a body, never a login, and a full URL on another host is refused rather than sent with this project's token attached. There is also no `--login` and no `--repo` on any sync command bar `labels`. A cross-repository address is still an address: `kettle pull owner/repo#42` re-points the client for that one call, which is bookkeeping and not a second connection. The one `PreToolUse` hook that exists now is `kettle mirror --hook`, and it polices nothing: it repairs an `AGENTS.md`/`CLAUDE.md` pair and reports. It is **opt-in per project** — `kettle init --mirror-hook`, or a question in `--interactive` — which is strictly narrower than what it replaced, a hook that was on for everybody who installed the plugin, in every repository they touched, enforcing a convention that is this repository's. It cannot fail a tool call: it exits 0 on every path including its own bugs. ## Tests ```bash make check # fmt, vet, test, go mod verify, build, docs — the whole gate go test ./... # just the tests ``` Three disciplines every test follows: - **`internal/cmd` builds the binary once in `TestMain` and runs it as a subprocess** against a throwaway project in a temp directory. The binary is never run in the directory it was built in, because that is exactly the arrangement that hid the `__file__` bug: a tool is installed in one place and used on projects in another, and a test that collapses the two proves nothing about resolution. - **Every fixture strips `CLAUDE_PROJECT_DIR`**, the first anchor of the walk, or the harness's own value would point every fixture at this repository. Anything touching credentials sets `KETTLE_CONFIG_HOME` at a temp directory, so a run can neither read nor overwrite the developer's own tokens. - **Every fake tracker answers `/api/v1/version`**, because building an SDK client asks for it. The fakes say 1.26.1; one says 1.19.4, and that one is a test — an instance too old for the dependency endpoints is answered from its version with no request made. ## Documentation that is generated ```bash kettle gen scaffold # into /.claude dist/kettle gen scaffold --out internal/scaffold/assets # into the embedded copy make check # exit 1 if that copy is stale ``` Everything between `` and `` comes from the command registry, so a renamed flag cannot ship with documentation that recommends the old one — and since the prose around it is embedded too, the whole document ships with the binary rather than beside it. The generator is [`internal/cmd`](internal/cmd/AGENTS.md)'s and the documents are [`internal/scaffold`](internal/scaffold/AGENTS.md)'s. **The loop is circular on purpose.** `assets/` holds the block already spliced in, because that is what a project gets byte for byte; so a registry change makes the render differ from the embedded copy, `--check` exits 1, regenerating fixes it, and the binary has to be **rebuilt** to pick the new bytes up. Note the asymmetry, because it is easy to get backwards: **everything under `internal/scaffold/assets` is written out and must never be edited in a project; every AGENTS.md in this tree is hand-written and must never be generated.** One is a document with a flag table in it, the other is a reason. ## Status Done and tested: every package in the table above, and the commands `init`, `auth`, `config`, `gen`, `mirror`, `version`, `new`, `check`, `ac`, `tree`, `index`, `evict`, `pull`, `push`, `remote`, `comment`, `close`, `labels`, `sync-evict`, `api` — plus `cmd/release`, against a fake Gitea. **The plugin is gone.** Its skills are embedded here, its hook is `kettle mirror`, and `kettle init` writes the whole `.claude/` tree. The marketplace catalogue at the repository root now holds one entry, [`tdl`](../plugins/tdl/AGENTS.md), which has no binary and never needed one. ## Keeping this file true - **Scope:** the binary as a whole — why it exists, what it depends on, how it is built and tested, and where each package's own document is. Files: `go.mod`, `go.sum`, `Makefile`, and the shape of the tree. - **Update it when** a package is added or removed (the diagram and the table both name every one), a dependency changes, a `make` target is added or its meaning changes, a cross-package contract like the round trip changes, or the argument for embedding the documents rather than shipping them stops holding. - **Do not** describe a package's internals here. That is what the files it links to are for, and a summary that drifts is worse than a link.