EN Contribute AI Agents

Contributing with AI agents

Français · Type: how-to · Audience: contributor · Context: engine repository · Status: ready · Applies from: 4.5.0

quest'n'click is made with AI assistants and reviewed by people. This page says how an assistant (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Gemini CLI, Aider or a hand-written agent) is set up in the engine repository, which rules it follows, and how its work is checked before it is merged.

What you get

An assistant that reads the project's rules first, edits content and code through the same commands and MCP tools a person uses, checks its own work with the truth commands, finds the documentation by section rather than by guessing, and whose change is read again by a second context before the maintainer merges it.

Context and versions

The engine repository. AGENTS.md and the MCP server exist since 1.0.0; the documentation tools search_docs, list_docs and read_doc { id, section } since 4.5.0 (read_doc { name }, the whole legacy page, exists before).

Prerequisites

• A prepared repository: Developer setup.
• An assistant that can run shell commands, or an MCP client (Local MCP setup).

Where to run the commands

In the engine repository, on your machine; the assistant runs from the repository's root, where it finds AGENTS.md, .mcp.json and .cursor/mcp.json.

How the project is made

src/engine/      core (the DSL, the engine), tools (validate, solve, lint, i18n…), dom (the player), minigames, reality
games/demo/      the sample game: rooms, layouts, art, audio, locales, storyboard
games/_template/ copied by npm run new-game
tools/           the commands, the Studio, the MCP server, the art and audio pipelines, the Vite plugins
bridge/          the Reality Bridge (the package quest-n-click-bridge)
connectors/      the connectors of the world outside (the package quest-n-click-connectors)
wiki/            the documentation, in English and French (4.5.0); docs/dev: the work log, the decisions, each release's passes

Until 4.5.0 the documentation lived in docs/en and docs/fr; they are now transition pages pointing to the wiki. The engine, the solver and the replay share one code path (Architecture, Code tour).

Made with an AI assistant, reviewed by people. The content is declarative, so an assistant reads and writes it like any other file (AGENTS.md holds the rules); every operation is a command and an MCP tool (MCP tools); after each change it can validate, solve, replay and take a screenshot, so it sees its own mistakes before a person does. Every result stays reviewable, in the Studio and in Git.

Steps

1. Point the assistant at AGENTS.md first. It is vendor-neutral: every assistant reads it. CLAUDE.md is a short pointer to it for Claude Code, with what is specific to Claude Code (skills, MCP through .mcp.json). AGENTS.md holds:
   • the files an assistant edits and who edits each (the storyboard first; rooms mostly by the AI; layouts never by hand, but by the Studio or the placement page; notes.json shared by both);
   • the commands that tell the truth (validate, solve, npm test, e2e, assets, prompts, audio, build, studio, mcp, i18n, lint, playtests, ids, prove:game, doctor, dev:lan, and GAME=<id>);
   • thirteen rules. The ones an engine contributor meets most: content is data, no functions in games/; never invent coordinates; after any content change run npm run validate && npm run solve && npm test and report the output, not a summary; after any visual change take a screenshot and look at it; never delete an asset, rename it _v1; when unsure, write a note in notes.json instead of guessing; read the classic mechanics before asking for a new command; never drop a sound file of unknown origin into audio/.

2. Connect the MCP server when the assistant speaks MCP. npm run -s mcp serves the Studio's operations as tools (get_room, set_text, add_note, validate, solve, screenshot, read_doc…). The repository registers it for Claude Code (.mcp.json) and Cursor (.cursor/mcp.json):

   {
     "mcpServers": {
       "quest-n-click": { "type": "stdio", "command": "npm", "args": ["run", "-s", "mcp"], "env": {} }
     }
   }

   Other clients: Local MCP setup. The human sees the assistant's edits live in the Studio and answers through the Notes tab; a note tagged task: true in notes.json is a request from the human (written from the Studio's Assistant): the assistant does it, then answers with add_note on the same about.

3. Let it find the documentation by section. With the MCP server:

   • search_docs { query, lang?, context?, version? } returns id#section results with an excerpt and the reason of the match, or an explicit empty list when nothing matches with confidence;
   • read_doc { id, section, lang? } reads that section (20 000 characters by default, a cursor for the rest), with where the text comes from (version, commit, doc revision) at its top;
   • list_docs { audience?, context?, type?, lang? } lists the pages there are to read.

   read_doc { name: "CONTENT_GUIDE" } still returns a whole legacy page in one block; prefer id and section.

4. Use the project's skills (Claude Code). .claude/skills/ holds new-game, new-room, new-character, storyboard, placement, review, production-plan, asset-prompts and megadrive-audio.

5. Make it check its own work, and say what it could not check. Before a pull request, the assistant runs the list of Before a pull request, one test suite at a time, and reports the commands with their output. A check it could not run (no browser, no Python) is said, never skipped silently.

6. Have a second context read it. A change of any weight is read again by a context that did not write it (another session, a sub-agent), which reproduces before it judges and ranks its findings (blocker, should, nit), then by the maintainer (Governance). An assistant's check of its own wiki pages is recorded as such (--kind ai --relation author), never as a person's review (Writing documentation).

Limit · no-approval-by-agent An assistant never gives the maintainer's approvals: signing a release tag, approving a carried field pass, or recording a human review each need the maintainer's own explicit yes (D37).

Expected result, and how to check it

The assistant's report names the commands it ran and their output; npm run -s mcp lists the tools in the client; search_docs answers with sections of wiki/. The pull request passes pr-gate, and the LOG or the pull request says what the second reading found.

Common errors

Symptom	Cause	Fix
The MCP client lists no tools	It was started outside the repository, or npm ci was not run	Start it from the repository's root; run npm ci
The assistant invents coordinates	It skipped AGENTS.md rule 2	Ask the human to place things in the Studio or the placement page, then read the JSON
The machine heats up, tests hang	Several test suites run at once, or orphan Vitest workers remain	One suite at a time; stop leftover workers by their process id
A report says "all green" without output	The truth commands' output was summarised	Ask for the output itself (rule 5)

Files or data changed

What the assistant edits (games/<id>/, src/, wiki/…), games/<id>/notes.json through add_note, and the branch's changes/ fragment. The MCP configuration files are tracked and need no change.

Recovery or going back

Everything the assistant writes is in Git and in the Studio's undo: git restore or git revert undoes it.

References

• AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md, .mcp.json.
• Working with an AI on a game, MCP tools, Local MCP setup.
• Governance, Before a pull request.

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