Agent and package contracts

Quirl 0.1 exposes installed command and Lua host knowledge through explicit, versioned formats. Agents do not need to scrape terminal help or assume that a capability exists from training data.

Agent surfaces

quirl agent catalog --format json
quirl agent context "deploy the billing service" \
  --format markdown --token-budget 6000
quirl agent manifest --format json
quirl agent validate context.json --kind context --format json

Every JSON document has a document_type, integer schema_version, and named fnv1a64: schema/content hashes. FNV-1a is used only as a stable freshness checksum; it is not an authenticity or security claim. Schema hashes cover deterministic structural descriptors for every nested field, enum, default, and deny-unknown boundary in the contract. They are schema fingerprints, not published JSON Schema documents. Catalog and manifest exports contain only commands and capabilities present in the loaded catalog and generated Lua HOST_API of the running binary.

Context ranking is deterministic: task terms match command paths, summaries, details/options/examples, and Lua host paths/capabilities with fixed weights; ties use stable names. The budget estimator is the Unicode-scalar length of the canonical compact JSON payload divided by four and rounded up. The envelope records the estimator, requested budget, estimated use, source hashes, and whether facts were truncated. A generated payload never exceeds its declared budget. If the highest-ranked complete command record does not fit, context keeps a deterministic compact projection with stable identity, signature, summary, typed IO, effects, exits, and provenance, omits its argument list and all but one example, and sets truncated = true; the catalog hash still points to the authoritative complete record.

Validation rejects unknown fields, incompatible schema versions, hash drift, nondeterministic ordering, and context budget drift. Catalog hashes are recomputed from their serialized command and host content. Context and manifest documents are subsets/projections, so quirl agent validate compares their catalog and host-API hashes with trusted anchors rebuilt from the running binary; the lower-level unanchored validator rejects those document kinds. Manifest content and nested capability hashes are also recomputed. Validation parses data only and does not grant authority or execute commands/Lua. Validation reads at most 4 MiB from a regular file. Larger inputs fail with a resource-limit diagnostic before JSON parsing or allocation proportional to the declared file size.

Package manifest

Project packages use plugin.toml by default:

schema_version = 1

[package]
name = "deploy-tools"
version = "0.1.0"
entry = "plugin.lua"
quirl = ">=0.1, <0.2"
summary = "Deploy services with explicit safeguards"
license = "MIT"

[capabilities]
request = ["process.spawn"]

[contributes]
commands = ["deploy-tools deploy"]
panels = []
indexers = []

[[public_commands]]
path = "deploy-tools deploy"
signature = "deploy-tools deploy <environment>"
summary = "Deploy a service"
details = "Deploys one service after validation."
input_type = "Nothing"
output_type = "Result<Deployment>"
examples = ["deploy-tools deploy staging"]
effects = ["spawn_process"]
error_codes = { "0" = "deployed", "1" = "deployment failed" }

[[public_commands.arguments]]
names = ["environment"]
kind = "positional"
value_type = "Environment"
required = true
documentation = "Target deployment environment"

All tables deny unknown fields. Package entry paths must be relative .lua paths without parent traversal. Capability requests must be sorted, unique, and present in quirl agent manifest. Contributed command names must match exactly one public_commands record. Public command metadata must include a summary, detailed contract, typed input/output and arguments, examples, explicit non-empty effects, and documented numeric error codes. Panel and indexer contributions use the separately versioned Phase 3 extension contracts and their explicit capability gates; they are not inferred from command metadata.

quirl package manifest --format json
quirl package build --format json
quirl package publish --dry-run --format json

package build reads and hashes the manifest/entry but never evaluates the entry. The CLI parses and lints the Lua entry under the restricted Lua layer, then conservatively recognizes direct generated HOST_API calls outside ordinary comments and string literals. Statically observed capabilities and effects must be declared; requested capabilities that are not directly seen produce a warning because indirect use cannot be proved from source text. Package file lists contain normalized package-relative paths, so invoking the build with an absolute or relative manifest path produces the same build record. The record includes the resolved Quirl version and installed host-API hash. Package manifests are UTF-8 regular files limited to 256 KiB. Lua entries are regular files limited to 4 MiB. Entry containment is checked against the canonical package directory; parent traversal, external symlink targets, directory or special-file entries, identity changes during resolution, and growth beyond the read limit fail closed. The bytes read from the verified handle are the bytes linted and hashed. package publish is deliberately limited to --dry-run in v0.1: it emits a deterministic plan and performs no network operation.