corpus-agents

name: corpus-agents description: Synthesize a project's AGENTS.md by combining local inspection with corpus-forge cross-corpus retrieval. Use when the user asks to "init agents", "generate AGENTS.md", "synthesize project conventions", or starts a brand-new repo that should ship with grounded agent guidance. allowed-tools: - Bash - Read - Edit - Write

What this skill does

Drives the corpus-forge agents init CLI command. The command:

1. Inspects the current project: languages, package managers, test framework, license, existing AGENTS.md / CLAUDE.md / README.md.
2. Samples representative files locally to extract import style, docstring style, error-handling examples, and test-naming patterns.
3. Queries the indexed corpus for cross-project idioms in the same language (pytest fixtures, logging conventions, dataclass usage, etc.) so the generated guidance reflects patterns the user has actually adopted across their other projects.
4. Synthesizes TWO artifacts via the configured LLM (the [code_enricher] block in ~/.config/corpus-forge/config.toml):
   • .corpus-agents/AGENTS.md — private, corpus-grounded, with chunk_id citations to the user's other projects. Gitignored.
   • .corpus-agents/shareable.md — sanitized subset. Citation-free. References only THIS project's own facts and language/tool defaults.
5. Maybe seeds the project root with the shareable body: if <root>/AGENTS.md is absent, the CLI copies shareable.md to that path so the user's collaborators immediately see safe conventions. If <root>/AGENTS.md already exists, it is never overwritten — not even with --force.
6. Appends .corpus-agents/ to .gitignore (idempotent).

Every claim in the private synthesis is traceable to either local sampling or a corpus citation. The shareable variant is gated to carry no citations at all — that file is for commit, not for grounded debugging.

When to invoke

• User explicitly says "init agents", "create AGENTS.md", "set up agent conventions", "synthesize project guide", or similar.
• New repo or project skeleton where AGENTS.md is missing.
• User wants to refresh the private debugging notes after the project drifted (the .corpus-agents/* files are the principal's scratchpad).

When NOT to invoke

• The user is asking about the corpus-forge project itself rather than their project's conventions — that's documentation, not synthesis.
• corpus-forge is not configured (code_enricher.backend == "none") and the user has no local LLM — the command will exit 2; redirect them to corpus-forge setup first.
• The user wants to overwrite an existing root AGENTS.md. The CLI intentionally never does that. If the user truly wants a fresh root file, ask them to move/delete the existing one first.

Two outputs — when to use each

The flow is:

1. Read .corpus-agents/shareable.md to confirm the sanitized conventions are accurate for THIS project.
2. Diff it against the auto-created <root>/AGENTS.md (they should match on a fresh run).
3. If the user already had a root AGENTS.md, manually merge the .corpus-agents/shareable.md highlights into it. The CLI did NOT touch the user's file — that's the safety contract.

Workflow

1. Confirm scope: ask which directory should be treated as the project root (default: current working directory).
2. Invoke the CLI:

   corpus-forge agents init --project-root <PATH> --json
   

   Add --no-ingest if the user has already pointed corpus-forge at the project. Add --no-root-write if the user does NOT want the automatic root AGENTS.md seeding behavior. Add --no-gitignore if the user manages .gitignore by hand.
3. Read the outputs: the JSON result's paths_written lists every file the command produced. Walk the user through:
   • The private .corpus-agents/AGENTS.md (with citations) for debugging.
   • The shareable .corpus-agents/shareable.md they should review before committing.
   • Whether a root AGENTS.md was auto-created (it will be unless one already existed or --no-root-write was passed).
4. Prompt edits: ask the user to tighten any section that doesn't match their actual conventions. Apply edits with the Edit tool to the relevant file (root AGENTS.md for the shareable surface, .corpus-agents/AGENTS.md for the private notes).
5. Do not commit: leave staging to the user. The .corpus-agents/ directory should stay gitignored.

Exit codes

• 0 — clean write.
• 1 — user-input error (bad --project-root).
• 2 — corpus not ready or no LLM endpoint configured.
• 3 — LLM synthesis failure (empty / malformed response upstream).

CLI flag summary

corpus-forge agents init
  [--project-root PATH]      default: cwd
  [--output-dir PATH]        default: <root>/.corpus-agents/
  [--no-root-write]          disable auto-write to <root>/AGENTS.md when absent
  [--gitignore/--no-gitignore]
  [--no-ingest]              error if project not in corpus
  [--force]                  overwrite .corpus-agents/* only — NEVER root AGENTS.md
  [--diff]                   print a diff vs existing .corpus-agents/AGENTS.md
  [--json]                   machine-readable result event

Gotchas

• --force is bounded: it only overwrites the four files in .corpus-agents/. The root AGENTS.md is the user's commitment surface; the CLI never touches it once it exists. Test this expectation when explaining the command.
• This skill does NOT use the corpus-forge MCP server — it drives the CLI directly so it can be run pre-MCP-registration on a brand-new setup.
• The synthesizer rejects an LLM response that drops a required section heading. Two passes (private + shareable) each have their own header set — the private pass additionally requires ## Cross-Corpus Patterns.
• The shareable response is gated: even if the LLM tries to sneak in a chunk_id=... citation, the synthesizer's citations list will still be empty for the shareable result. That said, audit the shareable markdown body before recommending the user commit it.