Give these docs to a coding agent
Markdown for agentsA coding agent works best with archangel when it can read the docs and run the checks itself. This page tells you how to give it both.
The docs as Markdown
Section titled “The docs as Markdown”Each page of this site is also a Markdown file. An agent reads Markdown with fewer tokens than HTML, and it gets the code blocks and the command output exactly.
| What the agent needs | Where it is |
|---|---|
| An index of every page, with a one-line description of each | /archangel/llms.txt |
| One page | The link Markdown for agents under the title of each page. The HTML of each page also names it in a <link rel="alternate" type="text/markdown"> tag. |
| One section, such as all of the reference | The section files that llms.txt lists, for example _llms-txt/reference.txt |
| Everything, in one file | /archangel/llms-full.txt. It is large, so give it only to an agent with a large context. |
Give the agent the index first. It can then read only the pages that it needs.
The meaning of a diagnostic code, with no network
Section titled “The meaning of a diagnostic code, with no network”archangel docs <code> prints the page of a diagnostic code: what it means, an example, and what to
do. It needs no config and no network, so an agent can run it in a sandbox:
npx archangel docs may-importThe output of archangel check ends with this command, for each code that it shows. The
diagnostic code pages of this site show the same text.
Tell the agent to use archangel
Section titled “Tell the agent to use archangel”Add these lines to the instructions that your agent reads, such as AGENTS.md or CLAUDE.md:
## Architecture
This repository's architecture is tested by archangel. The rules are in `archangel.config.ts`.
- After each change, run `npx archangel check`. Fix each problem before you continue.- To see what a rule permits, run `npx archangel rules`. To see why an import is refused, run `npx archangel explain <file>:<line>`.- To learn what a diagnostic code means, run `npx archangel docs <code>`.- Do not add an `archangel-allow` comment or a baseline entry to make a check pass. Ask first.- The docs are at https://enhancelabs.ai/archangel/llms.txt.Give the agent the result of each change
Section titled “Give the agent the result of each change”-
Start watch mode with JSON output beside the agent:
Terminal window npx archangel watch --format json -
The agent reads one JSON line after each edit. The line lists the diagnostics that are new and the diagnostics that are gone.
-
The agent fixes what is new before it moves on.
Editors and coding agents tells you about the language server and about each field of the JSON line.