# AI-Rulez > The standards-compliant lifecycle tool for agent knowledge and capabilities: author, generate, bundle, validate, govern, publish ## Docs - [Home](https://goldziher.github.io/ai-rulez/): AI-Rulez is a standards-compliant lifecycle tool for agent knowledge and capabilities. ## Get started - [Installation](https://goldziher.github.io/ai-rulez/installation/): Install ai-rulez using your preferred package manager. - [Quick Start](https://goldziher.github.io/ai-rulez/quick-start/): Get AI-Rulez running in 5 minutes. - [Standards](https://goldziher.github.io/ai-rulez/standards/): ai-rulez claims conformance with a standard only when a passing test backs the claim. - [Migrating to v5](https://goldziher.github.io/ai-rulez/migration-v5/): This page collects the breaking changes of the v5 release and what ai-rulez migrate v5 does about each. ## Author - [Configuration](https://goldziher.github.io/ai-rulez/configuration/): Configuration reference for .ai-rulez/config.toml (YAML and JSON configs are no longer read; ai-rulez migrate v5 converts them). - [Rules](https://goldziher.github.io/ai-rulez/rules/): Most AI tools can load rules from a folder, one file per rule, each with its own activation: always on, only when matching files are in play, only when the model finds the description relevant, or... - [Skill Frontmatter](https://goldziher.github.io/ai-rulez/skills/): A skill is .ai-rulez/skills/\/SKILL.md: YAML frontmatter followed by the instructions. - [Checks](https://goldziher.github.io/ai-rulez/checks/): Checks are code-review guidelines: per-topic instructions a review tool applies to a pull or merge request. - [OKF (Open Knowledge Format)](https://goldziher.github.io/ai-rulez/okf/): ai-rulez can export its rules, context, skills, agents and commands as an OKF bundle, import an existing OKF bundle into .ai-rulez/, keep a bundle in sync through the opt-in okf preset, and lint... - [Domains & Profiles](https://goldziher.github.io/ai-rulez/domains/): Organize AI configuration by team, subsystem, or project area. - [Roles](https://goldziher.github.io/ai-rulez/roles/): A profile picks domains for a project. - [Includes](https://goldziher.github.io/ai-rulez/includes/): Reuse configurations across multiple projects through inheritance and composition. - [Installed Skills](https://goldziher.github.io/ai-rulez/installed-skills/): Install named skills from external repositories. - [Local Configuration](https://goldziher.github.io/ai-rulez/local-overrides/): Personal, machine-local configuration that is never committed. - [Catalog](https://goldziher.github.io/ai-rulez/catalog/): ai-rulez catalog describes everything a repository defines: rules, context, skills, agents, commands and checks, with owner, version, size, the digest ai-rulez.lock pins, the roles that keep each... - [Monorepo](https://goldziher.github.io/ai-rulez/monorepo/): For large projects with multiple teams, organize your .ai-rulez/ configuration using domains and profiles to provide relevant context while avoiding overwhelming AI assistants with irrelevant... - [Examples](https://goldziher.github.io/ai-rulez/examples/): ai-rulez uses a file-based directory structure (.ai-rulez/) with TOML configuration. ## Generate - [Supported Harnesses](https://goldziher.github.io/ai-rulez/harnesses/): ai-rulez ships 52 built-in presets, one per AI coding harness. - [AGENTS.md and .agents/skills](https://goldziher.github.io/ai-rulez/agents-md/): AGENTS.md and .agents/skills/ are the closest thing to a cross-tool convention for project instructions and Agent Skills. - [llms.txt](https://goldziher.github.io/ai-rulez/llms-txt/): llms.txt is a markdown file at the root of a site or repository that tells language models what is there and where to read it. - [Hooks and Permissions](https://goldziher.github.io/ai-rulez/settings/): ai-rulez generate can write the lifecycle hooks, permission rules and a few other settings keys of a project into each harness's native settings file, without shipping a plugin. - [Permissions](https://goldziher.github.io/ai-rulez/permissions/): The top-level \[permissions\] block is one allow/ask/deny list for every harness that has a native permission surface. - [User-level Configuration](https://goldziher.github.io/ai-rulez/user-scope/): ai-rulez generate writes inside the project. - [Custom Presets](https://goldziher.github.io/ai-rulez/profiles/): Set presets in .ai-rulez/config.toml to control which tools ai-rulez generates for. - [Baz](https://goldziher.github.io/ai-rulez/baz/): The baz preset writes what the Baz pull request reviewer reads from a repository. - [Harness Traps](https://goldziher.github.io/ai-rulez/harness-traps/): Some harnesses accept a file that looks valid and then silently ignore it: a rule written to .cursor/rules/x.md is never read, and a Copilot path file named go.md is skipped. ## Bundle and publish - [Authoring Plugins](https://goldziher.github.io/ai-rulez/plugins/): ai-rulez generate --plugin packages your .ai-rulez/ project into distributable plugin bundles and a marketplace index for the Claude, Cursor, Codex, Gemini, Kimi, OpenCode, Factory, and Hermes... - [Agent Plugins](https://goldziher.github.io/ai-rulez/agent-plugins/): ai-rulez packages a project's skills and MCP servers as an Agent Plugins plugin directory, so any client that conforms to the standard can load them. - [Agentic Resource Discovery](https://goldziher.github.io/ai-rulez/ard/): ai-rulez can publish your skills, MCP servers and plugin for discovery through Agentic Resource Discovery (ARD): one ard.json manifest that a registry or an agent fetches from... - [Publish](https://goldziher.github.io/ai-rulez/publish/): ai-rulez publish turns the generated plugin bundle into release artifacts: a reproducible tar.gz, a manifest, checksums and a plan. ## Validate - [Strict Validation](https://goldziher.github.io/ai-rulez/strict-validation/): ai-rulez validate checks that configuration parses and matches the schema. - [Verifiers](https://goldziher.github.io/ai-rulez/verifiers/): \[\[verifiers\]\] declares deterministic, read-only checks over the repository, run by ai-rulez verifiers run. - [Poly Hooks](https://goldziher.github.io/ai-rulez/poly-hooks/): AI-Rulez publishes a reusable Poly hook catalog in poly-hooks.toml. ## Govern - [Trust Model](https://goldziher.github.io/ai-rulez/trust-model/): A repository's .ai-rulez/ configuration is content someone else may have written: you clone it, run ai-rulez generate, and it should not be able to spend your money, send your data anywhere, or... - [Lock File](https://goldziher.github.io/ai-rulez/lockfile/): ai-rulez.lock (in the configuration directory, committed) is the record of exactly what your AI configuration is made of. - [Approvals](https://goldziher.github.io/ai-rulez/approvals/): A scan says content looks clean; an approval says a named person read it and accepted it. - [Signing](https://goldziher.github.io/ai-rulez/signing/): A digest proves that bytes did not change. - [Organization Policy](https://goldziher.github.io/ai-rulez/policy/): An organization policy is a floor a repository may raise but never lower. - [SBOM](https://goldziher.github.io/ai-rulez/sbom/): ai-rulez sbom prints a bill of materials of the project's AI configuration as CycloneDX 1.6 or SPDX 2.3 JSON. - [Forge Client](https://goldziher.github.io/ai-rulez/forge/): internal/forge is a small, read-only GitHub REST client. ## Operate - [MCP Server](https://goldziher.github.io/ai-rulez/mcp-server/): The ai-rulez MCP (Model Context Protocol) server allows your AI assistant to programmatically and safely interact with your .ai-rulez/ configuration. - [Item-Load Telemetry (OTLP)](https://goldziher.github.io/ai-rulez/telemetry/): Usage telemetry answers "which skills are ever invoked". - [Usage Telemetry](https://goldziher.github.io/ai-rulez/usage-telemetry/): Which generated skills are ever used, which fire when they should not, and which can be retired? - [Evals](https://goldziher.github.io/ai-rulez/evals/): ai-rulez gives eval cases a supported place to live, keeps them out of the context your agents load, ships them in plugin bundles when you ask, and can report skills that have none. - [Improve (experimental)](https://goldziher.github.io/ai-rulez/improve/): ai-rulez improve run \ --with CMD runs an external optimizer (a tool that rewrites a skill against a benchmark) on a throwaway copy of the skill and accepts a candidate only if a held-out... - [Skill Search](https://goldziher.github.io/ai-rulez/search/): ai-rulez search ranks the skills your project serves against a query, with the same ranker as the findskill tool of mcp --serve-skills, and measures that ranking against labeled queries. - [Review](https://goldziher.github.io/ai-rulez/review/): ai-rulez review scores skills, agents and commands against a rubric you own. - [LLM Access](https://goldziher.github.io/ai-rulez/llm/): internal/llm.Client is the one Go interface for reaching a language model, so the provider, the cost controls and the privacy rules live in one place. - [Performance](https://goldziher.github.io/ai-rulez/performance/): How ai-rulez is benchmarked, how a regression is caught, and what the optimization passes changed. ## Reference - [Standards](https://goldziher.github.io/ai-rulez/standards/): ai-rulez claims conformance with a standard only when a passing test backs the claim. - [CLI Commands](https://goldziher.github.io/ai-rulez/cli/): All AI-Rulez CLI commands and flags. - [CLI Command Reference](https://goldziher.github.io/ai-rulez/cli-reference/): Every command, with its usage, aliases, examples and flags, generated from the binary's own command tree. - [Schema](https://goldziher.github.io/ai-rulez/schema/): The ai-rulez configuration is validated against a formal JSON Schema to provide editor support like autocompletion and real-time validation. - [Embedding (Go API)](https://goldziher.github.io/ai-rulez/embedding/): github.com/Goldziher/ai-rulez/v5/pkg/airulez loads a project, validates it, plans or applies a generate run and writes or checks its lock from Go, inside a process that may serve many projects at... ## Optional - [Full documentation](https://goldziher.github.io/ai-rulez/llms-full.txt): Every page above concatenated into one file. - [Agent Extends](https://goldziher.github.io/ai-rulez/proposals/agent-extends/): Status: implemented (kept for history) Motivation: eliminate agent-definition duplication and a confirmed silent-override bug. - [Agent Extends Docs](https://goldziher.github.io/ai-rulez/proposals/agent-extends-docs/): Built-in and shared-module agents give you a solid base (code-reviewer, docs-writer, security-auditor, polyglot-architect, language specialists, ...). - [Changelog](https://goldziher.github.io/ai-rulez/CHANGELOG/): All notable changes to this project will be documented in this file.