code-standards

name	code-standards
description	Apply Parler Protocol's engineering contract to a code change. Use whenever implementing a feature, fixing a bug, or refactoring in this repo — before writing code, not after. Walks orient → baseline → smallest change → test → verify → self-review, and enforces the hard gates (never cargo fmt, clippy -D warnings, make ci green, additive wire changes only, security invariants).
license	Apache-2.0
compatibility	claude-code

Code standards — the change workflow

You are making a code change in the Parler Protocol repo. The full contract is docs/engineering-guidelines.md — read it once per session (it's short). This skill is the execution order.

Steps

1. Orient. Read tasks/lessons.md (hard-won traps; obey them). Find the subsystem's doc in AGENTS.md's index and read only that one.
2. Plan if non-trivial (3+ steps or an architectural choice): short plan in tasks/todo.md — files touched, tests to add, risks. Going sideways → stop and re-plan.
3. Baseline: scripts/verify.sh --rust-only green before touching anything. A pre-existing red is the first task.
4. Implement the smallest root-cause change. Hand-match the surrounding style. Never cargo fmt.
5. Test: new behavior gets a test that fails without the change; security gates get negative-assertion tests (wrong token → 401, cursor unchanged, no leak).
6. Verify: run make ci until green before "done".
7. Self-review your own diff against docs/code-review-guidelines.md (or invoke parler-review). Fix findings before presenting.
8. Close out: docs updated in the same change; append to tasks/lessons.md if you were corrected or surprised; conventional commit message (feat|fix|docs(scope): …).

Tripwires — stop and check the guidelines when you're about to…

• change anything in crates/parler-protocol/ → ripple rules + additive-only wire contract
• add a dependency → transitive check, one non---locked build, strict cargo-deny licenses
• touch membership, tokens, or any auth path → audit every writer/reader path, negative tests
• write a secret to disk → parler_auth::write_private_file, never write-then-chmod
• hold a lock near an .await, or read env inside logic → extract a pure decision fn

No-progress guard

The same failure surviving two fix attempts means stop: append the finding to tasks/lessons.md, mark the item [BLOCKED], and surface it. Don't thrash.