lingtai-recipe

name	lingtai-recipe
description	Menu manual (not a tool) for everything recipe-related in LingTai. A **recipe** is the named payload that shapes an orchestrator's greeting, ongoing behaviour, and shipped library; every LingTai project uses one (selected at `/setup` time, inherited from a clone, or auto-discovered when a project already has `.recipe/` at its root). Routes to two sub-guides — `reference/recipe-format/SKILL.md` (read first when authoring or customising) and `reference/export-recipe/SKILL.md` (shipping the methodology / culture as a bundle others use to seed *new* networks) — and warns about the three different recipe-shaped artifacts that can co-exist in one project (inner network, outer applied recipe, captured applied snapshot — easy to conflate). Read this skill when the human mentions recipes, wants to author / customise one, or wants to publish a recipe for seeding new networks. Do NOT use for one-off exports of a single agent (that's just `cp -r`), or for in-network behaviour edits to the live system (those go through the kernel's writes to the agent's working directory, not through a recipe round-trip).
version	3.2.0
last_changed_at	2026-07-18T00:00:00Z
maintenance	If you find stale or incorrect information here, use the lingtai-issue-report skill to assemble evidence and obtain per-issue human consent before filing an issue. Never include secrets, credentials, tokens, or private paths.

lingtai-recipe: Recipes and How to Publish Them

Bundle root convention: The bundle root is the directory that contains .recipe/ at its top level (alongside the library folder). When pointing the TUI or any tool at a recipe, pass this directory, not .recipe/ itself and not a parent of it. For recipes published via lingtai-recipe skill, this is $HOME/lingtai-agora/recipes/<id>/.

A recipe bundle is a required .recipe/ behavioral layer (recipe.json manifest plus optional greet/, comment/, covenant/, procedures/ layer dirs) beside an optional framework-agnostic skill library named by recipe.json#library_name. reference/recipe-format/SKILL.md is authoritative for that structure; this router does not restate it.

Every LingTai project uses a recipe — selected during /setup, inherited from a cloned network, or auto-discovered when a project already has .recipe/ at its root.

This skill is the one place to look for anything recipe-related. Pick the sub-file that matches what you're doing, then read it in full before acting.

Nested reference catalog

lingtai-recipe owns these nested references. They are parent-owned drill-down files, not standalone top-level skills.

- name: recipe-format-reference
  location: reference/recipe-format/SKILL.md
  description: |
    Authoritative recipe bundle format reference: directory structure,
    `recipe.json` schema, optional behavioral layers, locale fallback rules,
    library sibling mechanics, validator contract, and custom recipe testing.
- name: recipe-export-flow
  location: reference/export-recipe/SKILL.md
  description: |
    Standalone recipe-export procedure for distilling a live network's culture
    into a portable recipe bundle: scope disambiguation, metadata collection,
    authoring, validation, sensitivity sweep, git initialization, and handoff.

Routing table

If you need to...	Read
Understand or author a recipe bundle: structure, recipe.json, optional layers, locale fallback, library sibling, validation, testing	reference/recipe-format/SKILL.md
Export a standalone recipe: distill culture into optional greet/comment/covenant/procedures plus optional skill library; no agents, no mailboxes	reference/export-recipe/SKILL.md

Disambiguate scope BEFORE picking a sub-guide

A single project directory can hold up to three recipe-shaped artifacts at once, and they are NOT interchangeable. Identify which the human means before going further:

1. The inner network — the agents currently living in .lingtai/ of the project you're invoked in (orchestrator + avatars, their mailboxes, their accumulated state). This is "your network." When the human says "export the recipe of this network," they want you to distil this network's behaviour into a fresh recipe — not ship the network itself.

2. The outer project's own .recipe/ — a recipe bundle sitting at the project root (sibling of .lingtai/), put there because the project was seeded from that recipe at /setup time. This is the methodology / culture that produced the inner network. It is a separate artifact with its own identity, version, and library. Do not conflate it with the recipe you author for the export. If asked to "re-export this recipe," check whether the human means this one (just republish the existing bundle) or wants a fresh recipe distilled from the network's current behavior — ask if ambiguous.

3. The applied-recipe snapshot at .lingtai/.tui-asset/.recipe/ — a copy of #2 captured by the TUI when the recipe was applied. Useful as evidence of what behavior is currently in force inside the network, but it is not the artifact to ship. The recipe you ship is freshly distilled from how the inner network actually behaves now, not a verbatim copy of what was originally applied.

Layout of this skill

lingtai-recipe/
├── SKILL.md                         ← this menu
├── reference/
│   ├── recipe-format/SKILL.md       ← authoritative recipe format reference
│   └── export-recipe/SKILL.md       ← standalone recipe-export procedure
├── assets/
│   └── gitignore.template           ← canonical .gitignore for exported recipes
└── scripts/
    └── validate_recipe.py           ← invoked by the export flow before git-init

Installed at ~/.lingtai-tui/utilities/lingtai-recipe/. Resolve absolute paths from there when invoking scripts.

Ground rules for the export flow

• Never skip the interactive steps. The flow requires human judgment at specific points (recipe naming, inspecting validator findings). The whole point of a skill-driven export is human-in-the-loop.
• Resolve $HOME first, mkdir -p before every write, verify afterwards with find / ls, and talk to the human via email rather than text output. reference/export-recipe/SKILL.md ("How to talk to the human", "Critical: Filesystem Rules") is canonical for all four — follow it there in full before writing anything.

Key structural rules that differ from older skills

If you have memory of an older version of this skill, these are the things that changed — old shape → new shape only. reference/recipe-format/SKILL.md specifies the new format in full; when in doubt, the validator (scripts/validate_recipe.py) is the source of truth.

• Recipe bundles now have two siblings, not one. Old: everything under .lingtai-recipe/ at the repo root. New: .recipe/ holds only LingTai-facing behavioral layers; libraries live at a sibling folder named by recipe.json#library_name.
• recipe.json moved into .recipe/. Old: <repo-root>/recipe.json. New: <bundle-root>/.recipe/recipe.json, with a grown schema.
• All four behavioral layers are optional. Old: greet.md and comment.md were required. New: every layer is optional. Absent greet → silent agent. Absent comment → no comment file in init.json. Absent covenant / procedures → kernel defaults.
• Library is a sibling, not inside .recipe/. Old: .lingtai-recipe/skills/<name>/SKILL.md. New: <bundle>/<library_name>/<skill>/SKILL.md, which makes libraries drop-in-usable by non-LingTai agent frameworks.
• Library skills are monolingual. No more SKILL-en.md / SKILL-zh.md variants. One SKILL.md per skill.
• Layer directories have their own fallback structure. Old: .lingtai-recipe/<lang>/greet.md. New: .recipe/greet/<lang>/greet.md (layer-then-lang, with <layer>.md at the layer dir root as the default).
• recipe.json is single-canonical, never localized. Localized display strings belong only in greet.md / comment.md / covenant.md / procedures.md.
• Network exports are gone (v3.2). Earlier versions of this skill described an export-network flow that shipped the live .lingtai/ snapshot alongside the recipe. That flow has been retired — /export now means recipe-only. Recipes are the seed; the garden is grown fresh in each new project.

Now go read the relevant nested reference.

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Found a bug or issue? If you encounter any problems with this skill, load the lingtai-issue-report skill and follow its instructions to report it.