agentnative-skill

The producer repo for the agent-native-cli skill — an agent-facing guide to designing, building, and auditing CLI tools for use by AI agents.

This skill is the third artifact in a three-repo ecosystem:

Repo	Role
agentnative (the spec)	Canonical text of the seven principles. CC BY 4.0.
agentnative-cli (anc)	The compliance checker. MIT / Apache-2.0.
This repo (agentnative-skill)	The agent-facing guide. Vendors the spec; teaches anc usage.

Repository layout

agentnative-skill/
├── SKILL.md                skill entry point — host-discovered; points the agent at getting-started.md
├── getting-started.md      three working loops; canonical anc invocations
├── bin/
│   └── check-update        consumer-side update-check script (gstack-style)
├── spec/                   vendored from agentnative-spec (do not edit)
├── references/             implementation guidance: framework idioms, project structure, Rust/clap patterns
├── templates/              drop-in starter files (clap-main, error-types, output-format, agents-md-template)
├── VERSION                 single-line current version (read by bin/check-update)
├── scripts/
│   ├── sync-spec.sh        vendor the latest agentnative-spec v* tag into spec/
│   └── generate-changelog.sh  release-time CHANGELOG generator (git-cliff + PR-body extraction)
├── docs/plans/             engineering plans (dev-only — guarded out of main)
├── .github/                workflows, rulesets, issue templates, PR template
├── AGENTS.md               project-level agent instructions FOR THIS REPO (producer-side)
├── CONTRIBUTING.md         how to propose changes
├── RELEASES.md             release procedure (cherry-pick from dev → release/* → main)
├── SECURITY.md             vulnerability disclosure
├── CHANGELOG.md            released versions (generated, never hand-edited)
├── cliff.toml              git-cliff configuration
├── LICENSE-MIT             MIT (one half of the dual license)
├── LICENSE-APACHE          Apache 2.0 (the other half)
└── README.md               this file

Consumer-facing files (SKILL.md, getting-started.md, bin/, spec/, references/, templates/, VERSION, LICENSE-*) are read by the agent at runtime. Producer-side files (scripts/, docs/, .github/, AGENTS.md, CONTRIBUTING.md, RELEASES.md, cliff.toml) ship to consumers via git clone but are inert at runtime — the host discovers SKILL.md and ignores everything else.

Install

See anc.dev/skill for the supported hosts (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, etc.) and the exact install commands. The install model is plain git clone --depth 1 into the host's skills directory — for example ~/.claude/skills/agent-native-cli/. The host auto-discovers SKILL.md at the install root; SKILL.md then points the agent at getting-started.md for progressive disclosure. Updates are git pull --ff-only from inside the install dir, prompted by bin/check-update.

Skill contents

• SKILL.md — skill metadata + entry-point pointer.
• getting-started.md — three working loops (existing CLI / new Rust / other language); canonical anc check invocations; "where things live" map.
• bin/check-update — periodic version check. Compares local VERSION to GitHub main, emits UPGRADE_AVAILABLE so the agent can offer to git pull.
• spec/ — vendored canonical principle text from agentnative-spec. See spec/README.md for the resync procedure. Do not edit by hand.
• references/ — implementation guidance: framework idioms (Rust + others), project structure, Rust/clap patterns. Used when remediating anc findings.
• templates/ — drop-in starting points for greenfield Rust CLIs (clap-main.rs, error-types.rs, output-format.rs, agents-md-template.md).

The principles are also published as a stable web reference at anc.dev/p1 through /p7.

Versioning

Tagged releases follow SemVer. The current version lives in VERSION; release notes are in CHANGELOG.md. Each tag has a corresponding GitHub Release with the same notes.

The skill's own version is independent of the spec it vendors. The currently-vendored spec version is in spec/VERSION.

Contributing

Issues and PRs welcome — see CONTRIBUTING.md. Routing:

• Spec questions or principle proposals → file in brettdavies/agentnative (the spec repo). This skill vendors the spec; substantive principle changes happen there first.
• anc bugs or feature requests → file in brettdavies/agentnative-cli. The skill teaches anc usage but doesn't implement the checker.
• Skill issues (templates, references, getting-started, layout) → file here.

Branch + release model documented in RELEASES.md.

Security

See SECURITY.md for vulnerability disclosure.

License

Dual-licensed under either of:

• MIT — see LICENSE-MIT
• Apache License, Version 2.0 — see LICENSE-APACHE

at your option. Matches the licensing on agentnative-cli so producers can adapt the skill's content into their own tooling without re-licensing friction.

Vendored spec content under spec/ is CC BY 4.0 (upstream from brettdavies/agentnative); attribution is in spec/README.md.