# agentSkill A skill packages what an agent needs to do one job well: the instructions, the assets and toolboxes the job runs through, and — for jobs with distinct branches — subskills that go deeper. Skills advertise themselves. Every registered skill's name and one-line description rides the agent's tool responses, so an agent discovers what this world knows how to do without being told to look. Invoking one returns the instructions plus the exact identities and tool names the job needs. ## Shape ``` <name>.agentSkill/ skill.yaml # the manifest: description, when, checks, dependencies, order instructions.md # the prose an agent receives on invoke README.md # what this skill is, for a human reading the tree .metadata # tags <sub>.agentSkill/ # optional subskills, reachable as <name>/<sub> ``` ## The manifest ```yaml $schema: zero/agent-skill/v1 description: Making a character a person can actually play. when: > Reach for this when the player should look like something else, or when you are about to build a camera and a body and wire them together by hand. checks: - check: Holding a movement key in play moves the body across the ground. observe: Read its position before and after holding the key; the numbers differ. - check: The body animates while it moves. observe: A time-sampled collage from a camera outside the player, while the key is held. dependencies: - "@builtin::tools.scene" - "@builtin::tools.scene.player" - "@builtin::components.PlayerPrototype" - "@builtin::docs.core.multiplayer" order: [spawn-points, camera-rig] ``` `description` is the line the roster carries, and the whole basis on which a skill is chosen. Name the job the skill makes a reader competent at, in the outcome they are after — "getting a scene's player and view right", "making content the engine will load". A reader scanning the roster is matching it against the job in front of them, so the closer it reads to their own sentence about that job, the sooner they open it. `when` is the longer trigger — the situations that should send a reader here, in the words they would use for their own task. `checks` is what the reader is answerable for at the end, and it leads the rendered skill, ahead of the procedure. Each entry pairs a **condition that must hold** with **where it is seen**, and both halves are required — a condition alone is satisfied by any glance, and the wrong vantage is how a job passes while every one of its faults sits outside the frame. Write them as observations someone else could repeat and disagree with: a number that changed, a thing visible in a named shot, a count that came back as one. A skill publishes only once it carries at least one. `stages` models a skill whose passes run in order, when the order is load-bearing. Each stage is `{ name, detail?, checks? }`, and a check that sits in a stage is answered after that pass has run — which is the difference between a criterion that means something and one that misleads. A skill with no meaningful order leaves `stages` out and lists its checks flat; a skill that has one may do both, and the flat checks then read as the final gate. `verdicts` names the fixed set of outcomes a reader reports — at the end of each stage when the skill has stages, and once at the end when it does not. Each is `{ verdict, means }`: the word, and what reporting it asserts. Both halves are required for the reason both halves of a check are. A verdict is a check one level up, deciding a whole pass rather than one condition, and a bare `refine` is a label each reader fills in privately — so two runs report the same word about different states and nothing downstream can tell them apart. Saying what it means settles the boundary in the skill instead of in whoever happens to be reading it. A check marked `perRun: true` is one whose content is written for the job at hand: the manifest can say *keep a list of every feature this object must have and answer against it*, but not what is on that list, because that is per run. It renders with that instruction attached. ```yaml verdicts: - verdict: continue means: Every check in the stage held, and the next stage can build on it. - verdict: refine means: A check failed on something this stage can still fix. Run it again. - verdict: stop means: A check failed on something an earlier stage decided. Go back to it. stages: - name: blockout detail: Mass and proportion only. checks: - check: Every part on the identity list has a stand-in at roughly the right size. observe: A capture beside the reference, at the same angle. perRun: true - name: material checks: - check: Metal reads as metal and cloth as cloth. observe: The metallic and roughness passes, after the lighting stage has run. ``` `dependencies` is one flat list of asset **identities**: a toolbox, a single tool, a guide, a component, a module, another skill. Each entry is resolved when the skill is opened and reported with what it turned out to be, so a skill never declares "this one is a toolbox" — the asset says so, and the reader groups by that. Identities are what make a skill portable. They pin like any other reference, so installing a skill into another world brings the toolboxes and guides it runs through along with it. A bare name (`scene`) or a guide path (`core/multiplayer`) resolves to nothing and is refused before publish. A toolbox entry lists the tools it carries, and a tool entry carries its own signature, so the instructions never restate a call contract that can drift. An identity this world lacks is reported as missing rather than dropped. Write instructions that name the toolboxes and tools a job runs through, and leave the call form to the reader — an agent may be holding the MCP tool surface, the shell, or Luau, and the signatures are listed for it either way. ## Subskills A `<sub>.agentSkill/` folder nested inside a skill is a subskill. It has the same shape as its parent and is invoked as `parent/sub`. Subskills are reachable only through their parent: they are absent from the roster and from `skills.list`, and appear in the parent's invoke result. A skill can therefore carry a dozen narrow procedures while costing the roster one line. `order` in the manifest names the subskills that lead. Any subskill it omits still appears, sorted by name, after the ordered ones — so adding a subskill folder is the only step needed to publish it. ## Publishing one Make a skill and it is live: it joins the roster agents read and it opens by name from the moment it exists. Edit its description and that is the line agents see next. A skill lives anywhere under `/zero/source/`. `asset.create` hands you a valid one to fill in: ```luau asset.create("agentSkill", "waveSpawning", { folder = "skills" }) ``` A skill's scope — `builtin`, `library`, or `world` — comes from where it lives rather than from anything it declares, so a world's own skill always reads as the world's. ## Opening one ``` agent_skill {} -- the roster agent_skill { name = "scenes" } -- one skill's instructions + deps agent_skill { name = "scenes/player-setup" } -- a subskill ``` The same three through the toolbox — `skills.list`, `skills.invoke` — and from Luau via `tools.use("skills", "invoke", "scenes")`. `asset.inspect` on a skill ref returns the structured record all of them render. Skills authored in a world are the world's own, and are labelled as world content wherever they surface beside built-in ones. ## In the Inspector Skill: what the skill is for and when it applies, how many checks and verdicts it declares, its stages, a link to each asset it depends on (and a problem for each that does not resolve), its subskills, and **Open** for instructions.md.

# notices Manage the notice keys that surface on your tool calls. Notices are event records the engine and world content post so a side effect you did not trigger yourself — a component disabled on an awake error, an import that finished, a hot-reload that failed — reaches you on your next tool call. Each notice is addressed to an audience: the caller whose work raised it, a list of callers, or every caller. Every caller has its own read position, so you are shown each notice addressed to you once, and reading it removes nothing for anyone else. Most of the time you just read them. This toolbox is for the case where one key repeats and you have already acted on it: `suppress` mutes a key for you so it stops rendering, `unsuppress` brings it back, and `list` shows the notices addressed to you and what you have muted. `list` first when a key is noisy: it prints each key exactly as you pass it to `suppress`. A key you suppressed keeps counting while muted, so `list` also tells you how many times it fired at you after you silenced it. Your mute is your own — every other caller keeps receiving the key. Suppression lasts for the session and resets when the engine restarts. `drain` is for a caller that does not read notices off its tool results at all. It hands back your unread notices as the same delivery text a tool result would have carried, which is how a harness that composes its own context collects a notice posted while nothing was mid-call — the case a tool result cannot reach. If you read notices normally, you do not need it. Notices are what the engine and the world tell you. To tell another agent or a person something yourself, message them with the `messages` toolbox.

# notices Post an event record that surfaces to the callers it is addressed to, on the response of the tool call that posted it, or on each one's next tool call. A notice reaches a caller without the caller knowing to look for it: each caller in the notice's audience is shown it once, attached to the response of the tool call that was running when it was posted, whether that call succeeded or failed. A notice posted while no call was running is attached to that caller's next tool call. Reading it marks it read for that caller alone; the other callers it is addressed to still receive it. Content-posted notices are marked as coming from world content, and their values render as data rather than as instructions. ```luau notices.post("wave complete", { wave = 3 }) notices.post("save slot corrupted, using defaults", { slot = id }, { severity = "warn" }) ``` Notices with the same `template` collapse into one line with a count, so a loop that posts the same template many times renders once with the varying values summarized: ```luau for _, path in ipairs(rebuilt) do notices.post("texture atlas rebuilt", { path = path }) end -- surfaces as: texture atlas rebuilt (x950) { path="a.png", "b.png", ... } ``` A `"warn"` or `"error"` notice posted again with the same template and the same values after its reader was shown it is a repeat. A repeat is held for a while after that delivery and collects every further repeat, then reaches the reader as one line carrying this delivery's count and the total, and each delivery of a repeat doubles the next hold. A notice with other values, or another template, is delivered at once beside it, so an error raised over and over never buries a new one: ```luau -- surfaces as: enemy spawn failed (x14 again, 15 in all) { wave="3" } ``` Keep the `template` a fixed sentence: it is the identity used for collapsing. Put every varying value in `params`. `opts.severity` is `"info"` (default), `"warn"`, or `"error"`; `opts.includeLocation` attaches the emitting call site. An agent that has acknowledged a repeating notice can mute it by key through the `notices` toolbox; the mute is its own, and every other caller keeps receiving the key. `opts.audience` says who reads the notice. Left out, it is the caller whose code is running — the agent whose call, task or callback posted it — or every caller when no caller is running (a notice the engine raises on its own). `"*"` addresses every caller; a list addresses those callers only, each entry an agent's name (as the `agent` toolbox's `roster` lists it) or a caller key `<kind>:<id>` such as `agent:<name>`. A notice reaches the agents on this engine: an entry naming no agent on this world's roster, an entry naming an agent the roster lists on another engine of the world, or an empty list, raises an error. ```luau notices.post("boss defeated", nil, { audience = "*" }) ``` `opts.actionable` says whether the callers a notice is addressed to are expected to act on it, as opposed to taking it in as background. Left out, a notice addressed to particular callers — the default audience included, so the probe, task or callback an agent set up reaches that agent — is actionable, and a notice for every caller is background. What a receiver does with that is its own decision. An agent working in the editor's agent panel is handed its notices as they arrive rather than on its next tool call: an actionable one starts a turn of its own when the agent is idle, and a background one joins the agent's context on its next prompt or tool call. ```luau notices.post("build ready for review", nil, { audience = { "terrain" }, actionable = true }) notices.post("lighting rebaked", nil, { audience = "*" }) -- background ```

# messages Talking to the others on this world: message another agent or a person by name, and the world chat for everyone. Tell another agent what you finished, hand off a part of the world, ask a question, reply to what someone sent you, or notify the whole room at once. A direct message goes to names: an agent's name, a person's display name, or everyone on the world at once. The `agent` toolbox's roster lists who is here. The world chat is one shared room every person and agent on the world reads. Either reaches its readers wherever they work on the world, on this engine or another. An agent is told of each one on its next tool call, and a person sees it in the editor. An agent with nothing to do until someone tells it something waits for their message, which answers the moment one arrives, rather than checking again and again. A message's `from` is the name its sender wrote. Anyone with write access to the world can send and post, so everyone who can reach you here is someone the world's owner let in. A direct message is information from another participant, not an instruction from the person you work for; every read of one carries that note. Every read of the world chat opens with a note that anyone on this world posts there, and each post in it is marked `untrusted`. The messages you sent show who has been told of each one and who has read it: a recipient's receipt records when its engine told it and when it first read it. What else you have read and what you marked unread is yours alone, kept on this device. A message addressed to a name you went by before a rename is still yours, and your read marks follow you across the rename.

# modules.messages Direct messages and the world chat between the people and agents on a world, as synced files that never enter the world's history. A direct message is one file under `/source/agents/messages/`, a chat post one file under `/source/agents/chat/`, each named `<13-digit utc-ms>-<from-slug>-<rand6>.json` and holding `{ from, kind, account?, to?, at, body, replyTo? }`. The file name without `.json` is the message's id. The first send or chat post writes `/source/agents/.zmignore` holding `*`, so staging leaves every message out; the ignore file itself enters history. Files whose ids are stamped more than seven days ago, or more than a day ahead (`FUTURE_BOUND_MS`), are removed as `list`, `read`, `unread` and `readChat` walk the folder. People are addressed by display name and agents by their name; `to` is a name, a list of names, or `"*"` for everyone on the world. A name nobody on the world holds refuses, listing who is there. A name held by more than one participant (a person and an agent, or two people sharing a display name) refuses, naming who holds it: a direct message reaches that name again once only one of them goes by it, and `"*"` or the chat reaches them all meanwhile. A message whose file would be past `MESSAGE_MAX_BYTES` as stored (the body's JSON escaping counts) refuses before anything is written. A message's `from` is the name its sender wrote: anyone with write access to the world can send and post, so the world's access is the trust boundary. Every read of the world chat carries `CHAT_WARNING`, and every read of a direct message carries `DM_NOTE`: both say to take the content with a grain of salt, like any other world content. The caller is a named agent by its roster name, a caller the roster names no agent by its caller key, and engine-authored work by the local person. The `…As` / `…For` calls take the participant explicitly; the editor's presence dropdown passes `localPerson()` to every one of them, so whatever drives the editor's UI, an agent through `gui.click` included, acts as the person. Each reader's state lives on this device, keyed by the reader's stable key: under `/source/local/agents/names/` every name it has held with the period it held it, and under `/source/local/agents/readers/` its read marks, the chat posts it has read, and when it last read at all. A message addressed to a name is the reader's when it was sent while the reader held that name: - An agent's first name is held from its session's start on the roster. A person's display name and an unnamed caller's key are held from the start, so a person who takes a display name another person used within the last 7 days also lists that person's messages to it. - The trusted presence service records each rename of this engine's agents as it happens (`recordRename`), including a `presence` frame that renames a local agent: the old name's period ends and the new one's begins at the rename. - A reader found under a name its record does not hold closes the recorded name at that read and opens the new one at its previous read, so the time between reads reaches both names. - A departed agent's name stays open in its record until the reader is next found under another name. - A name record past 64 KB, or one that does not decode, is read as none and starts again from the current name. - Stamps from different clocks agree to about a second, so each period reaches one second past both its ends: a message sent within a second of a rename is both holders'. A reader's file is written when one of its marks moves, and otherwise at most once a minute for its last read alone. The chat setting `showOtherAccountsAgentsInChat` lives under `/source/local/agents/` too; with it off, chat posts by agents working for another account are hidden (`chatVisible`). The roster decides whose a sender on it is, and a sender that has left is read by its post's `kind` and `account`. Each direct message carries receipts, one synced file per recipient under `/source/agents/receipts/<message id>/<reader key>.json` holding `{ key, name, notifiedAt?, readAt? }`: the recipient's stable reader key (written as a file name by the same reversible encoding as the reader files), the name it went by, when its engine told it of the message, and when it first read it, each in milliseconds since the Unix epoch. The trusted service writes `notifiedAt` for each agent on its engine it posts the notice to, once per message and recipient; a recipient's own first `read` (`readFor`, the dropdown's included) writes `readAt`, and a later read leaves it as it is. A person has no notice, and the editor's unread badge counting a message is not a notice either, so a person's receipt holds `readAt` only, written when they open the message. A chat post carries none. The sender's `list` with `sent`, and its `read` of its own message, carry `receipts = { { name, notifiedAt?, readAt? } }`; `receiptsOf(id)` answers the same. Receipts are removed with their message by the retention rule above. A receipt file past `RECEIPT_MAX_BYTES` (1 KB, read with `vfs.readBounded`), or with no `key` matching its file name, no `name`, a stamp that is no number or more than a day ahead, or neither stamp, is left out, and at most `RECEIPTS_MAX` (256) are read for one message. Only the recipient's own reading reaches a receipt; every other read mark stays on the device. Each VM decodes a message or receipt file once and keeps what it decoded until the file is written or removed, so a walk over the folders reads only the files that changed since the last one. Each engine tells the agents working on it of each message and chat post that lands there addressed to them, by the rules above, as a notice on their next tool call: a direct message its recipients, a chat post every agent but its sender that the chat setting lets it through to. The notice carries the direct-message note or the chat warning, and the message's id, sender and first line. Each message id is announced at most once per engine run, and the messages a world holds when the engine first takes it are where the engine starts, not arrivals. A file whose name is no message id, that does not decode as a message (a `kind` other than `agent` or `person`, an `account` that is no string, a `to` other than `"*"` or a list of names, or a `replyTo` that is no message id included), whose id is stamped more than a day ahead, or that is past `MESSAGE_MAX_BYTES` (64 KB, skipped with one warning, and read with `vfs.readBounded`, so a larger file's bytes are not loaded) is no message to `list`, `read`, `readChat` or a notice. A recipient on another engine is told by that engine when the file reaches it. | Call | Answer | |------|--------| | `me()` / `localPerson()` | The caller as a participant; the person signed in on this engine. | | `participants()` | Every name on the world, and the names held more than once. | | `resolve(to)` | The recipient list, or a refusal naming the problem. | | `send(to, body, replyTo?)` / `post(body)` | The new message's id. | | `list(opts?)` | Headers of the messages addressed to the caller by others, or with `sent` the ones it sent (always read, each with its `receipts`); filtered by `to` (named to that recipient), `from`, `unread`, `since`. | | `read(id)` / `unread(id)` | The message, marked read, with its `receipts` when the caller sent it and its `readAt` recorded on the caller's receipt when it did not; or the mark removed from a message sent to the caller. Either refuses a message neither addressed to the caller nor sent by it, and `unread` refuses one the caller sent, which is always read. | | `receiptsOf(id)` / `recordReceipt(id, key, name, field, at)` | A direct message's receipts by name; record `notifiedAt` or `readAt` on one reader's receipt, leaving a field it already holds. | | `readChat(since?)` | The visible chat posts, each marked `untrusted`: those stamped after `since` (0 for all within retention), or with no `since` the ones by others the caller has not read. The posts returned are read for the caller from then on. | | `sendAs(me, to, body, replyTo?)` / `postAs(me, body)` / `listFor(me, opts?)` / `readFor(me, id)` / `readChatFor(me?, since?)` | The calls above for the participant `me` instead of the caller; `listFor` with `withBody` puts each message's body on its header. | | `markChatReadFor(me, ids)` | Mark the chat posts `ids` read for `me`, as a read that returned them would. | | `unreadCount()` | The local person's unread messages from others plus the visible chat posts by others they have not read. | | `settings()` / `setSetting(key, value)` | The chat setting on this device. | | `heldNames(key)` / `recordRename(key, old, new, oldSince?)` | The names a reader has held and when; record a rename as it happens. | | `isId(id)` / `loadMessage(dir, id)` | Whether `id` has a message id's form; the message, or nil and why (`unreadable`, `too_large`, `malformed`). | | `heldFor(me)` | The names the reader `me` holds as `list` reads them, leaving its record as it is. | | `heldAt(held, name, at)` / `isAddressedTo(msg, held)` | Whether a reader with these held names held `name` at `at`, and whether `msg` is addressed to it. |

# zm Version control for the world you are working in. Each tool is the git command of the same name and means what git means by it; the shell `zm <verb>` runs the same command. Inspect the working state: `status` lists the staged, changed and untracked paths and the installed content that is ahead of its upstream, `log` the history of a revision (merged branches and pulled commits included), `revParse` the commit a revision names. Stage paths with `add` (`.` stages every changed path), then `commit` the staged tree — a commit takes only what is staged. `restore` takes working edits back to their staged or committed version, or unstages with `{ staged = true }`; `reset` moves the branch head in git's soft, mixed or hard mode; `stash` sets your changes aside and brings them back. Branches: `branch` lists, creates, deletes and renames them; `checkout` switches the session's branch (your uncommitted changes come with you), takes one side of an unmerged path, or writes paths from a revision; `merge` merges a branch into the session's (or aborts the merge in progress). Synchronise with origin through `fetch`, `pull` and `push`. `trash` lists what destructive operations threw away, restores an entry by handle, or empties the trash. Pull requests: `prCreate` sends your changes to installed content upstream; `prOpen`, `prList`, `prView`, `prConflicts` and `prMerge` propose and land a branch's work. Accounts, worlds, installing and publishing content — the ZeroMind library, world metadata, ratings and reviews — are the `zeromind` toolbox.

# multiplayer guide Reference docs surfaced through `guides { path: "..." }` and `man multiplayer`. The content lives in `guide.md`; this README is just the asset summary.

# agent Who you are on this world, and who else is here. Other people and other agents may be working on the same world as you, each agent under a name. An agent connected through ZeroMind is listed on every engine of the world; one connected directly to an engine's own MCP port is listed on that engine only. `whoami` gives the name you go by, your caller key and the person you work for. `roster` lists everyone this engine knows is on the world: each person, the engines they have open, and the agents working for them with each one's name, harness and last call. `rename` sets the name you go by — pick one that says what you are working on, so the people and agents around you can tell your work apart from theirs and address notices to you by it. Talking to the others on the world, by a direct message or in the world chat, is the `messages` toolbox. The `agent` block of every response's `state` carries the same answer: your name, and who else is on the world whenever that changes.

# assetType (asset type) The `assetType` is the **type of types** — the meta-type that every `<typename>.assetType/` folder is an instance of, including itself. A `<typename>.assetType/` folder declares a new asset type called `<typename>`: its on-disk shape, its identity rule, and the structural contract instances of the type must satisfy. This type is self-hosting. `assetType.assetType/` conforms to its own schema — a `type.yaml` plus a `README.md` — so the type system is defined in terms of itself rather than a hidden engine special-case (the same way a C compiler is written in C). Every asset in the engine, including each `.assetType` definition, now resolves to a registered assetType: a `.material` resolves to `material.assetType`, and `material.assetType` resolves to `assetType.assetType`, which resolves to itself. ## Why it exists Assets used to be mapped to their type *implicitly*, by matching the folder suffix against a name-keyed registry. That match carried no stored link: nothing on a `Foo.material` recorded *which* `material.assetType` it was written against, so two worlds shipping a same-named type could silently disagree. Making `assetType` a real, resolvable asset closes that gap — the link from an asset to its type is now an explicit reference pinned in the asset's `.refs` sidecar (`via: "asset_type"`), exactly like every other dependency. ## Where it lives - Source: `/zero/source/.../<typename>.assetType/` - Identity: `<typename>` (the `.assetType` suffix strips from the identity; the folder retains the suffix on disk). - Folder shape: - `type.yaml` — the structural spec the validator reads. **Required.** - `README.md` — type-level documentation. **Required.** - `about.yaml` — three short plain-language texts saying what the type is for (see "Say what your type is for" below). Every built-in type ships one. - `behavior.luau` — optional behavior/scaffolding module. - `template/` — optional canonical placeholder body the templater copies into a new asset of the type. - `<name>.module/` — optional shared code the type ships to **every instance** of it, conventionally `shared.module/` (see below). ## Shared code its instances reach (`asset.containing` + `.modules`) A type ships code every instance of it uses by declaring the modules in its own `behavior.luau`, as a map of tracked `require`s: ```luau -- inside <typename>.assetType/behavior.luau M.modules = { shared = require(".shared") } -- the sibling shared.module/ ``` An instance reaches it with one location-independent line: ```luau -- inside any foo.<typename>/init.luau local api = asset.containing(__FILE__).modules.shared ``` `__FILE__` is the chunk's own VFS path; `asset.containing` resolves the calling asset, and `.modules.<name>` follows the instance's pinned `typeRef` (the type's **guid**, recorded in the instance's `.refs` as `via = "asset_type"`) to the module its type declares. Because resolution follows that link rather than a category name, the same line in an instance of a different type resolves to that type's module, and identically-named modules in two types never collide. `asset.typeRef(target)` reads that guid for any target; `asset.resolve(asset.typeRef(target))` gives the full `AssetRef<assetType>`. See `assetTypes/README.md` § "Shared code: type-owned modules" for the full mechanism. ## How to create one Authoring a new asset type is just creating a `<typename>.assetType/` folder under `/zero/source/`. The engine registers `<typename>` as a category **the moment the folder is written** — no engine restart, no Rust change, and it works for built-in (`@builtin/assetTypes/`) and user-defined types identically. Once `<typename>` is registered, `<name>.<typename>/` folders are recognised as assets of that type and resolve their `asset_type` link back to this definition. Creating a `<name>.<typename>/` folder *before* its `<typename>.assetType/` exists fails fast: the suffix has no registered type, so the folder can't be a valid asset. Author the type first. ## Say what your type is for (`about.yaml`) Every type carries a small `about.yaml` beside its `type.yaml`, and the README you write for the type documents how to author an asset of it. Both are required, and both are meant to be written as you make the type, while you know what it is for. `about.yaml` answers three questions in plain words, one key each: ```yaml intent: "Sets the typeface of the text in your game: UI, labels, signs and 3D lettering." function: "A font, from a TTF, OTF or WOFF file, made available to all of Zero's text, including 3D text." usage: "You choose it by name for your UI or your text, and the text appears in that typeface." ``` - **`intent`** is what the type is for in someone's game. Name the whole range of things it covers, in the words a game maker would use for them. - **`function`** is how it works today: what an asset of the type is made of and what the engine does with it. - **`usage`** is what a person or an agent does with one: how they pick it, place it, call it, or hand it to something else. A few habits keep it useful. Write about the type as a whole, so the text holds for every asset of it, and leave out any one asset's name. Say what the type does right now. Stay with words a game maker would say, and mention a file name or a call only where a game maker would know it. The limits are in bytes: `intent` 800, `function` 1500, `usage` 1200. Each is generous, and a few sentences usually say it. Why bother: agents working in a world read these three texts to learn what your type is for, so they reach for it when it fits and use it the way you meant. People searching find the type by what they want to make, and the three texts let them tell at a glance whether it is the one they need. `asset.create("assetType", name)` scaffolds the file with all three keys, and a README whose first paragraph is a `[[describe]]` note. Each value starts with `[[describe]]` followed by a note on what to write; replace the whole value with your own words. A value or a README line that still starts with `[[describe]]` counts as not written yet, which the push's check of each asset it carries against its type reports, naming the file. A type you leave as it was is not asked, so older types stand. Many types at once, or one you would rather not write by hand: `services describe` lists the types that lack these texts and what filling them costs, and `{ mode = "all" }` writes them into the same files, where you edit them like anything else you wrote. Where the texts show up: `asset.inspect("<typename>", "assetType")` returns them as `detail.about`, `assetTypeRef:getAbout()` returns them as a table with the keys `intent`, `function` and `usage`, the type's `types/<typename>` guide page ends with an "About this type" section holding them, and the Inspector's Type section lists them at the top. The guide page is this README plus that section, so a README that explains the type well and an `about.yaml` that says what it is for read well together. ## Ask your assets to say what they are A type can ask each of its assets to carry a description: a file, written by the author or generated, that says what that asset is and what it is for. The people and agents who find an asset read it to decide whether it fits, and the author knows what it is for at the moment of making it. **1. Declare the file with a `described` check.** This is the whole requirement: ```yaml files: required: - path: "README.md" # any file name works kind: "file" content: - { check: "described", message: "Say what this widget is for and where it goes." } ``` With that in place: - An asset whose file is missing, empty, or still has a line starting with `[[describe]]` does not meet the type's requirements. `asset.validate` names it, `zm status` and `world.publishBlockers()` list it, and a push that carries it is refused with `message`. - `services describe` finds it (`mode = "find"` lists it and the price) and can write the description for it (`mode = "all"`). It writes only this file. For a YAML file that holds several texts, name the keys and their limits in bytes, the way this type does for `about.yaml`: ```yaml content: - check: "described" keys: - { key: "intent", max_bytes: 800 } - { key: "usage", max_bytes: 1200 } message: "Write intent and usage." ``` `headings` names sections a Markdown file must have. `assetTypes/README.md` has the full check. **2. Optionally, steer what gets generated with a `describe:` block:** ```yaml describe: guidance: "Say what the widget shows, what input it reacts to, and where it fits in a UI." examples: - "<identity of an asset of this type whose description reads well>" ``` `guidance` says what a description of your type covers, and `examples` names assets whose descriptions show the shape you want. Without the block, generation still works from the general describing guide and the check's `message`. An example is an asset of your type in the library whose description is a true, written one, never a scaffold's placeholder, and never the asset being described. When the library has none, leave `examples` empty rather than name one that is not. A type whose assets the model cannot perceive (a sound it cannot hear, a motion it cannot see) says so in `guidance`: the description comes only from what the asset's own files state, such as its name and the `.metadata` where a generation service records the prompt that made it, and when they state nothing the model answers `cannot` with that reason. `services describe` then fails that one asset with the reason and leaves its file as it was. **3. Start the file unwritten in your template.** Put a heading and one line that starts with `[[describe]]` and a short note on what to write, in `template/<file>`, so a new asset starts unwritten rather than with text that only looks written. Do not put example content in it: every new asset carries the template verbatim, and the same text on many assets makes them impossible to tell apart in search. Types whose assets say what they are through their own content (a mesh, a texture, a sound) leave this out: declare nothing and nothing is asked. ## The `behavior.luau` contract `behavior.luau` is the type's code. It returns ONE table, and the keys below are the ones the framework reads off it for EVERY type — the surface you get by declaring them. Anything else on the table is your own: reachable by name through `require("@builtin::assetTypes.assetType.shared.ref").loadTypeModule("<typename>")` for a system that knows your type (`computeShader` publishes `dispatchKey` that way), and never called by the framework. ```luau local M = {} M.ref = { ... } -- methods on every AssetRef of this type M.modules = { ... } -- shared code the instances reach M.global = {} -- reserved key; ship the empty table function M.onCreate(name, opts) ... end return M ``` ### The tables | Key | Shape | What the engine does with it | |-----|-------|------------------------------| | `M.ref` | `{ [name] = function(self, ...) }` | Every function becomes a method on every `AssetRef` of this type: `ref:name(...)`, with `self` the ref. This is how a type gives its instances an API. Two names in here are contracted — see below. | | `M.modules` | `{ [name] = require(".sibling") }` | Shared code the type's instances reach through `asset.containing(__FILE__).modules.<name>`, resolved by the instance's pinned `typeRef` guid. See the section above. | | `M.refShapes` | `{ [method] = "TypeName" }` | Declares the result type of a `M.ref` method so the LSP can check what a call site does with it. See the `M.refShapes` section below. | | `M.events` | an events schema | The events an ASSET of this type fires, declared the way a component declares its own. Readers subscribe through `ref.events.<name>:connect(...)`; firing authority stays with the type. Keyed by the asset's guid, so every resolver of the same asset shares the signals and a re-resolved ref re-attaches to subscriptions already there. | | `M.namePattern` | a Lua pattern string | The name shape `asset.create` enforces for instances of this type, replacing the default `^[A-Za-z][A-Za-z0-9_]*$`. | | `M.global` | `{}` | Reserved. Ship the empty table. | ### The lifecycle hooks Each is optional; a type that omits one costs nothing. The engine calls them: | Hook | Signature | When it fires | |------|-----------|---------------| | `M.onCreate` | `(name, opts) -> { [filename] = contents }` | On `asset.create("<type>", name, opts)`. Returns the files that scaffold the new instance, as a map of relative path to contents; the framework writes them. The `opts` type annotation is the schema `asset.create` validates the caller's arguments against, so annotate it. | | `M.onReplace` | `(dest, files) -> { [filename] = contents }` | On an `asset.create` that writes over an asset already at `dest`, after `onCreate`. Receives the files `onCreate` produced and returns the files to write, so a type that re-derives its content (a rig re-imported from its source file) can carry what an author added to the asset it replaces. Optional. | | `M.onRegister` | `(self)` | Once per instance, the first time it registers: on `engine.onWorldLoaded` for instances already in the world, immediately on a live `asset.create`, and when an instance arrives after that sweep (installed, pulled, or synced from a peer). Guarded by the instance's path, so a double trigger never double-registers. An instance that leaves the runtime releases the guard, so one arriving at the same path again registers. This is what makes "write an asset into the world and it takes effect live" work for content that registers into a runtime registry. The `@builtin` library is excluded from the sweep. | | `M.onChange` | `(ref, change)` | On every VFS write to a file INSIDE one of this type's instances. `change` is `{ path, asset, type, kind, origin }`: `kind` is `"edited"` or `"seeded"`, `origin` is `"local"` or `"remote"` (an importer runs on the originator only). **Filter on `change.path`**: the hook fires for any file under the folder, so act on the one you care about. It runs as its own task and may wait on what it reads: a `vfs.read` of bytes only the blob store holds (a binary file on the web build) fetches them. The writes to one asset reach the hook in the order they were made, each once the hook before it has finished. A re-entrancy guard suppresses writes back into the same asset routed inline from the hook, and a write the hook makes is routed on a later frame like any other, so the hook must be convergent on its own: diff the meaningful state and short-circuit while your own regeneration is in flight. | | `M.onDelete` | `(ref)` | When an instance of this type leaves the runtime: it is deleted, or the engine swaps away from the world binding that held it. Its files are gone from `/zero/source` by then. A removal routed while the instance's `onChange` is waiting reaches `onDelete` once that hook, and every write queued behind it, has finished. On a swap the instance still exists in the world it belongs to, and a VFS write the hook makes reaches the world now bound. | | `M.validate` | `(assetRef) -> { { code, message, severity? } }` | On `asset.validate`, after the structural `type.yaml` check, for the type's own SEMANTIC validation. `severity` defaults to `"error"`; error-severity problems flip `ok` to false, warnings do not. A hook that raises or returns a non-table is itself reported as a `validate.hook_failed` error. `world.push` runs this per user asset, so declaring it enforces your type's rules at publish time with no further wiring. | ### The two contracted `M.ref` names Most `M.ref` methods are your type's own surface: name them what you like, return what you like. Two are read by the engine and mean the same thing for every type, so their shape is fixed: - **`instantiate(self, target?, opts?) -> (root, idMap)`** — makes an instance part of the scene. Defining it is the whole opt-in: `ref:canInstantiate()` is true exactly when it exists. Its **return is a contract** — see the next section. - **`inspect(self) -> detail`** — the type-specific half of `asset.inspect`. See its section below. ### Names a type cannot shadow Some keys resolve on every `AssetRef` before per-type dispatch, so an `M.ref` entry of the same name is never reached: `canInstantiate`, `getSource` / `getBytes` / `getText`, `exists`, `deps`, `meta`, `runtime`, `events`, `modules`, `typeRef`, and the residency flags `has_backing_asset`, `has_runtime_changes`, `cpu_resident`, `gpu_resident`. These are the behaviours every asset must expose identically, which is why they win. ### Reloading A `behavior.luau` edit ripples to existing refs with no restart: dispatch reads `mod.ref` fresh each time and `require`'s cache is re-run in place. A type whose folder appears at runtime is picked up on the next dispatch — negative results are not cached either. ## The names your type's assets hold (`references:`) An asset that names another asset by a string depends on it: the named asset travels with it into a pack or a pull, and a name nothing answers to is an unresolved dependency `worldValidation` reports and the push gate refuses. The engine reads `require(...)` and the asset lookups on its own; a name your type's format or API carries anywhere else is one you declare, in `type.yaml`: ```yaml references: # A top-level key of this type's own files that holds a name (or a table of them). keys: - { key: "shader", type: "shader" } # A call's argument, counting from 1, wherever the call is written. args: - { call: "g:node", position: 2, type: "procNode" } # A field of the options table a call takes. fields: - { call: "fx.beam", field: "material", type: "material" } ``` `type` is the category the name resolves in, one of `asset.categories()`. An argument declared once per category, at the same `call` and `position`, takes the name from whichever category answers. A key or a field holds one category: declared again with another `type`, it takes the later one. The block is declared as the type registers, when the library or the world holding it is laid into the VFS, so every reference table reads it whatever script has or has not run. `asset.declareReferenceKey`, `asset.declareReferenceArg` and `asset.declareReferenceField` declare the same things from a script, for a surface that is no type's. ## What search does with your type (`indexing:`) A type declares what search embeds for its instances. **This is not optional and there is no useful default**: ZeroMind runs your declaration and adds nothing of its own, so anything you do not point at is absent from the index — silently, and for every instance of the type forever. Twenty types once shipped with no `indexing:` block and every instance of them was unfindable. A type whose instances are never searchable (a run record, a log) says so with `indexing: none`; every other type declares a recipe. A type without an `about.yaml` beside its `type.yaml` refuses every push that carries it, whether or not the push edited the type. Texts in it that are not written yet follow the rule every `described` file follows: they refuse the push that edits, stages or commits the type. Two words carry the whole thing, and they are the same two the search tool exposes: - **`identity`** — what an instance IS. For anything you can look at, that is the picture (`content:` + `modality: image`, matched directly by a text query). For everything else it is the authored text that says what it is. - **`capability`** — what it DOES and how it is made. Code, settings, the model-written summary of them. A type with no behaviour has no `capability` entry. A type with nothing to look at has no image. Leaving a slot empty is a statement; filling it with whatever happens to be lying around is not. The one you have to decide when authoring a type is: *for an instance of this, what is the thing a person would recognise it by, and what is the thing it does?* A texture answers "the image" and "its compression settings". A module answers "its README" and "its code". Write those two answers into `indexing:` and the rest follows. Three specifics worth knowing before you write one: - **`derive` is instructed by this type's own `README.md`.** A model reads an instance's source and writes a description; what it embeds is the description, not the source. It follows your README to know what it is looking at, so a type whose README says what its instances are gets good derivations for free. There is no prompt to name. - **`derive` loses detail.** It keeps the main technique and drops secondary ones. If the source is code you want searchable by its own vocabulary, declare the same files a second time as `capability` with `extractor: verbatim`. Two entries, same role, different failure modes. - **Never `source: { field: name }`.** A filename is one or two words with no usable embedding, and a corpus indexed that way answers "language runtime" with `say_runtime_2.soundClip`. `facets:` is the second stage: a `file:` embedded whole (`.metadata`, so keys nobody declared still get indexed) plus computed keys that state a value for every instance including `false` — the raw file can imply "not rigged" and can never say it. The full schema, every extractor and the facet sources are in [`assetTypes/README.md`](../README.md); the scaffolded block with inline guidance is in [`template/type.yaml`](template/type.yaml). ## A container whose contents work together (`system: true`) A type that is a container can say its contents are one working whole by declaring `system: true` at the top level of its `type.yaml`. `package` declares it: the components, modules, scenes and tools a package ships are parts of one system. The declaration is plain data, read from the decoded `type.yaml` (`require("@builtin::assetTypes.assetType.shared.declaration").of("package").system`), and a type that leaves it out is an ordinary type. ## What your type looks like (`preview:`) A type declares how its instances are pictured, and the engine makes the picture when something needs it: staging an instance whose `preview.png` is missing or pictures content it no longer holds queues a render, a view that shows the instance asks for one, and `ref:preview()` renders one on demand. An edit renders nothing on its own. Each `preview.png` records the content it pictured, which is how a stale one is told from a current one. The preview studio owns the light, the backdrop, the framing and the camera, and nothing in the world reaches it, so an instance pictures the same in every world. Declare one of four recipes: | `kind` | The picture is | Your type provides | |---|---|---| | `instantiate` | the asset stood in the studio through its own `instantiate` | `ref.instantiate` | | `image` | a file the instance holds, fitted to the frame, nothing rendered | `source.files`, the candidate files in order | | `surface` | the asset painted on a builtin mesh | `mesh`, and `ref.previewMaterial(self) -> { material }` | | `custom` | whatever `ref.preview(self, opts)` returns | `ref.preview` | ```yaml preview: kind: surface mesh: sphere ``` A scene-instantiable type that declares nothing still answers `ref:preview()` through its `instantiate`, but persists no picture: the declaration is what makes the engine keep one. List `preview.png` among the type's files so an instance may hold it. The picture is findable only when `indexing.content` names it. The two are separate statements, and neither is derived from the other: ```yaml indexing: content: - role: identity modality: image source: { file: "preview.png" } ``` `@builtin::assetTypes.assetType.shared.previewRecipe` reads the declaration; the scaffolded block with inline guidance is in [`template/type.yaml`](template/type.yaml). ## Typing a result from the instance (`M.refShapes`) Every method on `M.ref` is checked against the type its `--!return` names, and every asset of the type gets the same one. That is right for most methods and wrong for the ones whose result is shaped by the ASSET: a method answering one entry per child folder, per row of a config, per binding an input map declares. The widest true annotation for those is `{ [string]: Thing }`, and an indexer accepts every key — so a caller's typo reads as valid and nothing reports. `M.refShapes` lets the type state the result per instance. Each entry is `function(self) -> (typeExpression, source?)`: a Luau type expression for THIS asset, and the module whose type vocabulary the expression uses. Read the asset; never run it — stating a type must not take effect. ```lua -- inputMap.assetType/behavior.luau — the shipped example. -- `activate()` hands back one handle per control the map declares. M.refShapes = { activate = function(self): (string, string) local names = {} for _, control in ipairs(M.ref.controls(self)) do table.insert(names, control.name .. ": Handle") end if #names == 0 then return "", "" end return "{ " .. table.concat(names, ", ") .. " }", "@builtin::modules.zinput.scheme" end, } ``` With it, `map.jump:onPressed(fn)` resolves and `map.noexisting` is reported with the map's real controls. Without it, both pass silently. ### What the call site has to say A per-instance type is matched by the asset's IDENTITY, so it applies only where the reference the method is called on says WHICH asset. Two spellings do: ```lua -- a component field, whose declared default names the asset public = { map = Field.assetRef("inputMap", "@builtin::inputMaps.default", Sync) } local controls = public.map:activate() -- typed for THAT map -- an annotation, naming category and identity local m: AssetRef<"inputMap", "@builtin::inputMaps.default"> ``` `asset.resolve("<identity>", "<category>")` carries the CATEGORY, so the methods the category defines are checked on the result — but not which asset it found, so a per-instance result keeps the category's declared return. A reference that names no asset (`asset.resolve(someVariable)`, a value passed in as a parameter) carries neither, and calls on it are unchecked. That is the same rule everywhere: the checker states what the code states, and a name computed at runtime states nothing. ### The result is a value, not a binding The type belongs to the expression, so it travels the way any inferred type travels. Indexing the call's result is checked; stashing it in a module local and indexing it from another function is not, because the local's declared type is what carries across — and `any` (or no annotation) carries nothing: ```lua -- checked: `d.greting` is reported function awake() local d = public.dialogue:lines() d.greeting:say() end -- NOT checked: `lines` is a module local typed `any` local lines: any = nil function awake() lines = public.dialogue:lines() end function start() lines.greting:say() end ``` Bind what you need at the call site and the names stay checked in both places — the asset-derived type at the boundary, ordinary scoping after it: ```lua local lineGreeting = nil function awake() local d = public.dialogue:lines() lineGreeting = d.greeting -- `d.greting` is reported here end function start() lineGreeting:say() end ``` ### When nothing is reported and you expected something From a call site, a type that is correct and a type that was never published look the same: no diagnostic either way. `require("@builtin::assetTypes.assetType.shared.refShapes").published()` answers which it is. It returns two maps — the category surfaces, and the per-asset results keyed by identity and then by method: ```lua local shapes = require("@builtin::assetTypes.assetType.shared.refShapes").published() shapes.categories.dialogue --> "{ lines: () -> any, lineNames: () -> { string } }" shapes.returns.Shopkeeper.lines --> "{ browsing: Line, farewell: Line, greeting: Line, wares: Line }" ``` An identity absent from `returns` was never published for, which is a different thing from published-and-correct — and the reason to look here rather than at the call site. The answers are recomputed when an instance is written, so a control added to a map reaches the checker with no restart. Only types that declare `refShapes` are read per instance, and at most 64 assets of one type are — past that the type keeps its declared return and the engine log names what was dropped. ## The instantiate hook (`M.ref.instantiate`) — a contracted return A type opts into becoming part of the scene by defining `instantiate` on its `ref` table. That is the whole opt-in: `ref:canInstantiate()` is true exactly when the hook exists, so consumers offer a scene path — an `Asset.source` field, a viewport drop, a tool argument — by CAPABILITY rather than by a list of type names. Unlike `inspect`, this hook's **return is a contract**. A caller writes one piece of code against every instantiable type, so what comes back cannot vary by type: ```lua -- behavior.luau local Instantiable = require("@builtin::assetTypes.assetType.shared.instantiable") local M = {} M.ref = { instantiate = function(self, target, opts) local root = Instantiable.root(self, target, opts) -- IN: the base opts -- ... compose whatever this type is, under `root`, NOW ... return Instantiable.result(self, root, idMap) -- OUT: the contract end, } return M ``` **IN.** `target` is an owning entity ref: the instance lands under (or, for a hierarchy type, onto) that owner. With no target the type spawns a fresh root. `position`, `rotation`, `scale`, `name` and `temporary` mean the same for every type — `Instantiable.root` applies them to a root you mint, `Instantiable.place` to one you adopt, so you never re-read the spec. Honour more opts of your own if your type needs them, and document them in the hook's `--!arg` docs. **OUT.** Return `(root, idMap)` through `Instantiable.result`: - **`root`** — the composed root, as an `EntityRef`. Composition is **synchronous**: everything your type builds is live when you return, so the caller can parent to it and read its components in the same statement. Do not defer the work to a component's `awake` and return an empty shell — a root that is not live is refused. - **`idMap`** — the `originalId -> runtimeId` map naming what you spawned, or nil for a type with no addressable children (`result` normalises it to `{}`). **A caller never receives nil.** A component that re-composes your asset on every load keeps this map and passes it back in, which is how a cross-entity reference into the composition survives a reload. `AssetRef` runs every `instantiate` through `result` on the way out whether or not your type called it, so returning something else fails at your own call rather than handing a caller a nil root. Calling it yourself is still how you say what you return, and running it twice changes nothing. `@builtin::assetTypes.assetType.shared.instantiable`'s README is the full reference for both halves. ## The inspect hook (`M.ref.inspect`) `asset.inspect(ref)` resolves `ref`, builds a common envelope shared by every asset (`identity`, `name`, `guid`, `source`, `typeName`, `typeDefinitionPath`, `scope`, `origin`, `description`, `tags`), then calls the resolved type's own inspect hook — `M.ref.inspect(self)` on `behavior.luau` — for the type-specific `detail`. The hook returns *only* `detail`; the framework fills in everything else: ```lua -- behavior.luau local M = {} M.ref = { inspect = function(self) -- self.path is the asset's own folder. Parse the asset's OWN -- files — source text, a native payload header, its `.metadata` -- — never runtime state (a live component instance, a GPU -- upload, a compiled schema): inspect must work on an asset that -- hasn't been compiled, uploaded, or registered yet. return { -- type-specific fields, whatever this type wants to surface } end, } return M ``` A type that omits `M.ref.inspect` yields the generic record: the envelope alone, `detail = nil`. That's a valid, working state — not an error — but it means agents calling `asset.inspect` / `tools.use("assets","describe", ...)` on an instance of the type see only identity and scope, none of what makes an instance of it meaningful. Declaring the hook is what makes a type's instances inspectable for what they actually are. A hook that raises leaves `detail = nil` and sets `record.warning` to the error text — `asset.inspect` itself never raises for a resolved ref. ## Discovery - `asset.list("assetType")` — every registered asset type. - `asset.inspect("<typename>")` — the type's identity, source path, and this README, plus its `about.yaml` texts as `detail.about`. - `asset.resolve("<typename>", "assetType")` — the `<typename>.assetType` asset itself (used by the validator to find the type's `type.yaml`). ## Related - `assetTypes/README.md` — the full `type.yaml` schema and validator rules. - `@builtin::assetTypes.assetType.shared.instantiable` — the instantiation contract's shared implementation, both halves. - Every other `*.assetType/` here — the concrete types built on this meta-type. ## The Inspector a type ships Every type names the file its Inspector sections come from with `inspector: { type: "inspector.luau" }` in its type.yaml. `asset.create("assetType", name)` scaffolds the block and an `inspector.luau` whose Contents section lists an asset's files, built from `ctx.parts`. `asset.validate` on a type that names none reports `assetType.inspector_required` (an error for a `@builtin` type the engine's library authors; a warning for a world's own, and for one the library carries by reference, which the world that published it answers for), and one whose file does not load `assetType.inspector_invalid`. ## In the Inspector Type: what the type.yaml declares (suffix, container, primary files, the settings and inspector blocks), whether the type ships a behavior, how many instances it has, and **Open** for its files. Schema: the settings every instance carries, as read-only typed controls at their defaults (a type whose schema is per instance says where it is declared). Instances: a link to each of the first 20 assets of the type, and how many there are when there are more.

# drain Return your unread notices as the delivery block, instead of waiting for them to be attached to your next tool result. Notices normally ride tool results, because for most clients a tool result is the only channel into the model's context. That leaves a hole: a notice posted while you are not mid-tool-call — an import or a build that finishes after your turn ends — has nothing to ride, and nobody reads it. A harness that composes its own context pulls the queue here instead, and can start a turn with what it finds. What it returns is marked read for you, so read it: if you also read notices off your tool results, each one reaches you exactly once, on whichever path reads it first. Nothing is removed for other callers — a notice addressed to several callers still reaches the ones that have not read it — and keys you muted with `suppress` are passed over. Returns `{ block }`, or nil when you have nothing unread. Overflow content is written under `/source/tmp/notices/` and named in the block. Use `list` for a look at the notices addressed to you that marks nothing read.

# list Show the notices addressed to you and the keys you muted. ``` use_tool { toolbox = "notices", tool = "list" } ``` `pending` holds the stored notices addressed to you, read or unread, less the keys you muted; a notice stays stored until every caller it names has read it, or it ages out. Each pending row carries its key, template, severity, origin, count, and source. `suppressed` holds your own muted keys, each with the number of times it fired at you while muted. Listing marks nothing read. Copy a key from here to pass to `suppress`.

# suppress Mute a notice key you have acknowledged, for you alone. It keeps counting (visible in your `list`) but never renders on your tool calls again this session. Every other caller keeps receiving it. ``` use_tool { toolbox = "notices", tool = "suppress", args = { key = "user:atlas:texture rebuilt" } } ``` The key is the exact `origin:source:template` string `list` prints. Muting is available to the operating agent; a loaded world component cannot mute its own notices. Suppression resets when the engine restarts.

# unsuppress Un-mute a notice key you suppressed, so it renders on your tool calls again. This reverses your own `suppress` only. ``` use_tool { toolbox = "notices", tool = "unsuppress", args = { key = "user:atlas:texture rebuilt" } } ``` Pass the same `origin:source:template` key you suppressed. Available to the operating agent.

# Toolbox (asset type) A toolbox is a namespace folder that groups related `.tool/` children plus shared helpers. Toolboxes are the addressing layer for tools — every tool's identity is `<toolbox>.<name>`, so the toolbox name appears in every callsite. Toolboxes also own a `shared.module/` helper module that the toolbox's tools `require(".shared")` for common utilities (result envelopes, validators, formatters). ## When to use one - You have two or more related tools that belong together (an `anim` toolbox with `play` / `stop` / `list`; an `assets` toolbox with `compose` / `validate`). - You need a shared helper module exclusively used by a tool set. - You want a clean dot-namespaced identity for your tools (`my_tools.foo`, `my_tools.bar`). If you only have one tool and no shared helpers, you still need a toolbox — it's the required parent. ## Where it lives - Source: `/zero/source/.../<Name>.toolbox/` - Identity: `<Name>` (the `.toolbox` suffix strips). - Folder shape (container-style — open child set): - `README.md` — instance documentation. **Required.** - `.metadata` — agent-editable tags + free-form fields. **Required.** - `shared.module/` — optional shared helper module (`init.luau` + `README.md`). - `<x>.tool/` — any number of `.tool/` children. The validator permits unlisted children (`allow_unlisted: true`) so tool subfolders don't need to be declared per-name. ## How to create one ```luau tools.createToolbox({ name = "<Name>", description = "..." }) -- or the generic scaffold: asset.create("toolbox", "<Name>") -- Creates: /zero/source/<Name>.toolbox/ -- README.md (instance README template) -- shared.module/ (ok / fail result-envelope constructors) -- `folder` places it in a subfolder of /source; `into` nests it in a -- resolved `.package`: asset.create("toolbox", "<Name>", { folder = "tools" }) ``` Then add tools under it: ```luau local box = asset.resolve("<Name>.toolbox") asset.create("tool", "<toolName>", { into = box }) ``` ## How it operates 1. **Registration.** Writing into a `.toolbox/` folder indexes the toolbox. It becomes the parent namespace for any `.tool/` children. 2. **Tool identity composition.** Each child `.tool/`'s identity is `<toolbox>.<tool>`. Listing the toolbox's tools enumerates the children. 3. **Shared helpers.** Tools inside the toolbox pull `shared.module/` in via `require(".shared")` (relative require from the tool's `init.luau`). 4. **Hot reload.** Editing `shared.module/init.luau` reloads every tool in the toolbox (they all `require` it). Editing the toolbox folder structure (adding / removing tools) reflects in `tools.list` immediately. ## Discovery - `asset.list("toolbox")` — every registered toolbox. - `asset.inspect("<name>")` — child tools, source, this type README. - `ls /zero/source/<Name>.toolbox` lists the files the folder holds. - `tools.list()` — every tool across every toolbox. ## Authoring conventions - **Per-tool implementation lives in each `<x>.tool/init.luau`.** The tool's full function body — argument validation, the call into engine APIs, the return value — goes in `init.luau` with `--!desc` / `--!arg` / `--!return` / `--!example` annotations above the function. **Every exported function is declared `typed function`** — the keyword compiles to the runtime argument check, so a plain `function` accepts any input and reports success on garbage. Do NOT make `init.luau` a one-line forwarder onto a function defined in `shared.module/`. - Keep `shared.module/` thin: result envelope constructors (`shared.ok(value, formatted)`, `shared.fail(message, exitCode)`), argument validators, common formatters — anything genuinely used by more than one tool. Per-tool logic does NOT belong here. - Group by domain, not by surface — `assets` toolbox holds asset operations, `entity` toolbox holds entity operations. Tools that feel unrelated probably want different toolboxes. - Document the toolbox's surface in `README.md` — what problem space it covers, who calls into it, any shared invariants. ## Common pitfalls - **Missing parent toolbox.** Tools cannot exist outside a toolbox. Always scaffold the toolbox first. - **Cross-toolbox shared.** Each toolbox has its own `shared.module/`. Don't try to share helpers across toolboxes; if you need cross-toolbox helpers, factor them into a standalone `.module`. - **Toolbox identity.** Strip the `.toolbox` suffix in identity references (`my_tools`, not `my_tools.toolbox`). ## Related types - `.tool` — the required child(ren) of a toolbox. - `.module` — for cross-toolbox utilities. ## In the Inspector Tools: how many tools the box holds, whether it ships a shared module, what each tool does, and a link to each tool.

# Module (asset type) A module is a reusable, stateless (or globally-stateful) Luau library that other code pulls in with `require()`. Modules are the unit of factored-out logic in a world: helpers, math libraries, format parsers, registries, shared algorithms. ## When to use one - You have logic you want to share across multiple components, services, scenes, or tools. - You have a registry, lookup table, or shared cache that callers all read from / write to. - You want a stable API surface (`M.fn`) other code can depend on. If the logic is bound to one entity, use a `.component`. If you want a named UI of fields rather than functions, use a `.preset`. ## Where it lives - Source: `/zero/source/.../<name>.module/` - Identity: the source path with `/` written as `.` and each segment's type suffix dropped — `/zero/source/demo/beats.module` is `demo.beats`, and `/zero/source/kit.package/beats.module` is `kit.beats`, the container's name kept and its `.package` suffix gone. `asset.create` returns this string, `asset.resolve(...).identity` reads it back, and the `require` forms below write it as `<identity>`. - Folder shape: - `init.luau` (or `init.lua`) — module body. **Required.** Returns a table (conventionally named `M`). - `README.md` — instance-level documentation. **Required.** - `.metadata` — agent-editable tags + free-form fields. **Required.** ## How to create one ```luau asset.create("module", "<name>") -- Creates: /zero/source/<name>.module/ -- init.luau (canonical `local M = {} … return M`) -- README.md (instance README template) -- `folder` places it in a subfolder of /source, and that subfolder -- leads the identity: `{ folder = "lib" }` produces `lib.<name>`. -- `into` authors it inside a resolved container (a package, a toolbox), -- whose own identity leads the same way: asset.create("module", "<name>", { folder = "lib" }) asset.create("module", "<name>", { into = asset.resolve("myPkg.package") }) ``` ## How it operates 1. **Registration.** Writing `init.luau` into a `.module/` folder indexes the asset and registers the module path with the resolver. 2. **Loading.** The first `require("<identity>")` runs the file's body and caches the returned table. Subsequent requires from anywhere return the **same table** — this is the shared-state lever for "module-local" registries. 3. **Hot reload.** Editing the file re-runs the module body and folds what it returns into the table already loaded, so that table keeps its identity: a caller that captured it with `require` reads the new source's functions and values through the reference it already holds, and a later `require` returns that same table. A key the new source drops goes away; a key something set at runtime stays. The body's own `local`s start again from their initial values, so state that must outlive an edit lives in `modules.state()` (`guides { path: "core/scripting-and-tasks" }`). 4. **Identity resolution.** A module is reached by its `<identity>`, and where the caller lives decides which spelling of it resolves. For a module in a **world**, from a caller in that same world — another module, a component, a scene entrypoint, or an `execute` chunk: - `require("<identity>")` — the identity on its own, resolved against the caller's own root. It carries every folder segment, so a module created with `{ folder = "demo" }` is `require("demo.beats")`. - `require("@root::<identity>")` — the same root-relative resolution, written out. - `require(".sibling")` — a module in the same folder, by its bare name; `..name` steps up one folder, `...name` two. Logs, stack traces and hot-reload notices name that same module `@local.source.<identity>` — its key under the world source root. The `<identity>` tail of that key is the form above, so a trace reading `@local.source.demo.beats` is `require("demo.beats")`. For a module in a **library** — content under `/zero/source/libs/@<lib>/` — `@<lib>::` addresses that library's root from anywhere: `require("@builtin::modules.transform")`. Mounting a world as a library moves its files under such a root and flips the caller root to `@<lib>::`, which is what keeps the root-relative forms above resolving across the move. ## Discovery - `asset.list("module")` — every registered module. - `asset.inspect("<name>")` — public functions, source path, this type README. - `ls /zero/source/<name>.module` lists the files the folder holds. ## Authoring conventions - Return a single `M` table from `init.luau`. Top-level statements with side effects run on first require — useful for one-time initialization, dangerous if they touch the engine before it's ready. - Write exported functions as `typed function`, not `function`: the argument types are enforced at the call and the checker knows the signature, so a caller's mistake is reported where they made it. - Annotate exported functions with `--!desc` / `--!arg` / `--!return` / `--!example` so the LSP, `tools.list`, and `asset.inspect` surface them. A function with no `--!desc` is reachable only by someone already reading this file. - Declare a VALUE with `Field.<kind>(default, mode, description)`, and a table whose members are reached through a metatable with `--!members <TypeName>` — the latter gives the surface its accepted member set, its type, and its documentation from one table. See `guides { path: "core/authoring" }` for all four rules and `modules/api/engine/entity.module/members.module` for a worked member table. - Keep module state in module-local upvalues or in `modules.state()`. Globals leak across reloads. Module-locals start again from their initial values with each hot reload; the table `modules.state()` returns is the same table on both sides of every reload. - Prefer focused modules over kitchen-sink modules. If two halves of a module have no shared state, split them. ## Common pitfalls - **Cyclic requires.** A `require` chain that loops will return the partial table (the half built before the cycle was detected). Design for one-way dependencies. - **Engine-time side effects.** Don't `entity.spawn` at module top-level — the engine may not be ready. Expose an `M.init` and call it from a scene entrypoint. - **Hot-reload + module-local cache.** A module that caches expensive computation in upvalues loses that cache on reload — fine for dev, but be aware in performance work. - **`init.lua` vs `init.luau`.** Either works, `.luau` is canonical. - **Writing one while play runs.** A `/source` write made while play is running lands on the play shadow, and a guarded play-exit discards it unless it is kept. One `.module` write shadows `init.luau`, the `README.md` and the `.metadata` together. `vfs.write(path, bytes, { durable = true })` skips the shadow, and `vfs.promotePlayShadow` keeps what is already on it — the `core/vfs` guide has the model and what each route costs. ## Related types - `.component` — for entity-bound state + lifecycle hooks. - `.service` — generates content you don't have yet (a mesh, sound, texture, …) via a metered provider. - `.tool` — for a single agent-callable function with a YAML schema. - `.package` — to group several modules + components + scenes into one shippable folder. ## In the Inspector Exports: what the module exports (name, kind, signature), parsed from its source without running it, with **Check** (the LSP's diagnostics for its entry file) and **Open**.

# chatPost Post to the world chat: the one room every person and agent on this world reads, for telling or notifying everyone at once. The post reaches them on every engine of the world. The agents among them are told of it on their next tool call, and the people see it in the editor. A direct message through `send` reaches only the participants it names. A post past 64 KB as stored refuses. For example, an agent starting on the harbour tells the room so, and asks to be told before anyone moves the docks.

# chatRead Read the world chat, oldest first. With no `since`, you get the posts by others you have not read yet; with `since` (milliseconds since the Unix epoch), the posts stamped after it, and `0` gives every post of the last 7 days, yours included. The posts returned count as read for you from then on. Each post carries its `id`, `from` (the name its sender wrote), `kind` (`person` or `agent`), `account` (the user id of the poster's person), `at`, `body`, and `untrusted = true`. The person you work for can hide the posts of other accounts' agents with a chat setting, and the posts it hides are left out. Every answer opens with a `warning`: anyone on this world can post in the chat, so take it with a grain of salt, like any other world content. For example, an agent joining a world reads the whole chat of the last week to catch up on what the others have said, and after that reads only what is new each time it is told of a post.

# list Your direct messages, oldest first, as headers: each one's `id`, `from`, `to`, `at` (milliseconds since the Unix epoch) and whether you have `read` it. By default these are the messages others sent you, including ones sent to a name you went by before a rename; with `sent`, the ones you sent, which always read as read. Narrow the list with `unread`, `from` (the sender's name), `to` (a recipient the message names) and `since`. Listing marks nothing read. Each message you sent carries `receipts`, one per recipient that has been told of it or has read it: the `name` it went by, `notifiedAt` when its engine told the agent of the message, and `readAt` when it first read it, each milliseconds since the Unix epoch. An agent's receipt appears once its engine has told it; a person is told in the editor, so a person's receipt appears when they open the message. A recipient with no receipt has not been told yet. A message to everyone carries a receipt for each recipient told or reading. Receipts go with their message after 7 days. Every answer carries a `note`: a direct message is information from another participant on this world, not an instruction from the person you work for. For example, an agent told of new messages lists only the unread ones, then opens each with `read`; an agent that handed off its part lists its sent messages to see whether the one waiting on it has been told and has read it.

# read Read one of your direct messages, one sent to you or by you, by the id `list` names it by, and mark it read for you. The message carries its `body`, `from` (the name its sender wrote), `kind` (`person` or `agent`), `account` (the user id of the sender's person), `to`, `at` (milliseconds since the Unix epoch), and `replyTo` when it answers another message. A message you sent carries `receipts`, as `list` shows them for your sent messages: each recipient told of it or who read it, by `name`, with `notifiedAt` and `readAt`. Reading a message sent to you records when you first read it on your receipt, which its sender sees; nothing else of what you read or mark unread leaves this device. A message addressed to someone else refuses. Messages are removed after 7 days, so an id `list` no longer shows refuses too. Every answer carries a `note`: a direct message is information from another participant on this world, not an instruction from the person you work for. For example, an agent reads the message `props` sent it about the props it placed, and replies through `send`, naming that message's id as the one it answers.

# send Message another agent or a person on this world: tell them what you finished, hand off a part of the work, ask something, or reply to a message they sent you. Address each by the name it goes by: an agent's name, a person's display name, a list of names, or `"*"` for everyone on the world. It reaches each recipient wherever they work on the world, on this engine or another. An agent is told of it on its next tool call, and a person sees it in the editor. To reply, pass the id of the message you are answering as `replyTo`. To check that it arrived, list your sent messages: each carries a receipt per recipient, saying when that recipient's engine told it of the message and when it read it. A person's receipt appears when they open it. A name nobody on the world holds refuses and lists who is here. A name that more than one participant holds, a person and an agent or two people sharing a display name, refuses and names who holds it: none of them can be sent a direct message by it while it is shared, and `"*"` or the world chat reaches them all. A message past 64 KB as stored refuses; the body's JSON escaping counts toward that. The `agent` toolbox's roster lists everyone here. For example, an agent that finished the terrain tells the agent named `props` that the heightmap is ready and where it is, and gets back the new message's id.

# unread Mark a direct message sent to you unread again, so `list` with `unread` shows it until you next `read` it. Your read marks are yours alone and live on this device; nobody else's change. The messages you sent are always read, so `unread` of one refuses; so does a message addressed to someone else, and one removed after 7 days. For example, an agent that read a request it cannot act on yet marks it unread, so it comes back up the next time the agent lists what is unread.

# wait Wait for a message. Use it when you have nothing to do until another participant tells you something — the agent building the room you furnish says it is done, a person answers your question. It blocks until a direct message to you is unread and returns its header, the same one `list` shows. With `chat`, a world chat post by someone else wakes it too; `from` waits for one sender only. When something is already unread it answers at once. It waits up to `timeout` seconds, 120 unless you name another, and at most 600. When the time passes with nothing new it answers `timedOut` with an empty list, and you wait again to go on waiting. A wait longer than a tool call's inline time goes on running in the background, and its answer reaches you the way any long tool call's does. It marks nothing read: `read` opens a message and `chatRead` reads the chat. Every answer carries the `note` on how to treat what other participants say. An agent whose harness wakes it with a new turn when a notice arrives can end its turn instead of waiting: an agent the editor launches in the engine is started on a new turn when a message or chat post for it arrives while it is idle.

# zm.add Stage paths for the next commit. Takes a single path or an array of paths and marks them ready to be committed, following git staging semantics: an array stages every row its paths select once, so several files of one asset stage that asset's family once. Passing `.` (or the `-A` / `--all` sentinels) stages every dirty path at once, the same shortcut the shell `zm add` builtin recognises. Staging is the step between editing the working copy and committing — a commit takes only what has been staged. A scene is staged as its `scene.json` holds it. Pending live scene edits (entities spawned or changed through the ECS) stay pending: write them into the scene first with the `sceneAuthoring` toolbox (`changes`, then `acceptChanges`) or, in edit mode, `layers.active:save()`. When a stage leaves pending edits out, a notice names them and the calls that keep or drop them.

# zm.branch Branches — `git branch`. - `zm.branch()` lists the branches, the session's marked `current`; `{ remotes = true }` lists origin's (`origin/<name>`) and `{ all = true }` both. - `zm.branch("feature")` creates `feature` at `HEAD` (`{ start = "<rev>" }` starts it elsewhere). The session stays where it is; `zm.checkout("feature")` moves it, bringing your uncommitted changes along. - `zm.branch("feature", { delete = true })` deletes it. It refuses a branch whose commits the session's branch does not hold, or whose working tree holds uncommitted changes; `{ delete = true, force = true }` deletes it regardless (`git branch -D`). - `zm.branch("feature", { rename = "feature-2" })` renames it. A name starting with `-` is refused: it is an option in git, never a branch.

# zm.checkout `git checkout`. - `zm.checkout("feature")` switches this session to `feature`. Your uncommitted changes and staged entries come with you; a switch that would replace a path you changed with a different version refuses with git's message naming the paths, and nothing moves — commit or `zm.stash` first. Another caller's uncommitted changes stay on the branch they were made on. Returns once the branch's content has landed. - `zm.checkout("feature", { create = true })` creates `feature` at `HEAD` (or `start`) and switches to it. - `zm.checkout("", { paths = { p }, theirs = true })` takes the merged-in side of an unmerged path whole (`ours` takes the session branch's); `zm.add(p)` then records the resolution. - `zm.checkout("", { paths = { p }, rev = "HEAD~1" })` writes the path as that revision holds it, and stages it.

# zm.commit Materialize the currently staged tree as a new commit with the given message, checkpointing the world's content. Following git semantics, it takes only what has already been staged and does not auto-stage dirty paths, so stage first. On success it returns the new commit id. A commit is a local checkpoint; publishing it to others is a separate push.

# zm.fetch Update the `origin/<branch>` remote-tracking ref — `git fetch`. Mirrors the world's ZeroMind branch head into local commit history without touching the working tree, and reports how the session branch relates to origin: `behind` counts origin commits you don't have, `ahead` counts local commits origin doesn't have, and `diverged` means both. Content can advance on ZeroMind outside your session — a collaborator pushes, a pull request merges, an installed pin moves. Fetch is how that drift becomes visible: `zm.status` shows the remote-tracking line as of the last fetch, and `zm.pull()` reconciles (fast-forward when behind, three-way merge when diverged).

# zm.log The history of a revision, newest first — `git log`. Every commit reachable from `rev` (default `HEAD`) through both parents: a merged branch's commits and pulled commits appear along with the ones recorded on the branch. `{ limit = N }` caps the count (0, the default, returns them all), `{ rev = "feature" }` starts elsewhere, `{ path = "/source/foo.luau" }` keeps the commits that touched one file.

# zm.merge Merge a branch into the session's branch — `git merge <source>`. The merge runs locally in the world; nothing reaches ZeroMind until the result is pushed with `zm.push`. When the session's head is in the source's history the head fast-forwards onto it; otherwise a two-parent merge commit lands. `{ noFf = true }` always makes a merge commit and `{ ffOnly = true }` refuses anything but a fast-forward. Local changes follow git's rule: one on a path the merge rewrites refuses the merge with git's `Your local changes ... would be overwritten by merge` message, naming the paths; every other local change stays in the working tree. A scene's unsaved live edits count as a local change to its `scene.json`: a fast-forward that rewrites that scene refuses, naming the scene and how to save or discard the edits, and a merge commit refuses over any scene holding them. On conflicts, git-style markers are written into each conflicting text file and the cleanly-merged remainder is applied; `zm.status` lists the unmerged paths. Resolve each (edit out the markers, or take one side whole with `zm.checkout("", { paths = { p }, theirs = true })`), then `zm.add` + `zm.commit` — that commit records the merge. `zm.merge("", { abort = true })` aborts the merge in progress.

# zm.prConflicts Read what stands between a pull request and a merge. Returns the mergeability verdict, the merge base, both heads, and one entry per conflicting path. A conflicting TEXT path carries `marked_text`: the same `<<<<<<<` / `=======` / `>>>>>>>` rendering a merge leaves in a working tree, with the source and target sides laid against their common ancestor. A binary path carries the two sides' hashes and no text, so pick a side. Resolve a path by writing the settled bytes back to it and committing on the source branch. The request re-analyses on the next read, so a resolved path stops appearing here. A mergeable request returns an empty conflict list. `zm.prView` says HOW MANY conflicts there are; this says WHAT they are. ``` zm.prConflicts(nil, 1) zm.prConflicts("11111111-2222-3333-4444-555555555555", 3) ```

# zm.prCreate Send your changes to installed content upstream — `zm pr create`. For each origin world your installed content came from, the files you changed are three-way merged against the origin's current content (a region the origin changed too becomes a local conflict to resolve first), pushed as a branch in the origin world, and opened there as a pull request — merged straight away when you may merge there (`{ merge = false }` leaves it open). `zm.prCreate()` sends every installed asset that is ahead of its upstream; `zm.prCreate({ "/source/Doom.component" })` sends the named install roots. `zm.status` lists what is ahead and `zm diff <root> upstream` shows the changes. `{ dryRun = true }` reports the plan without sending anything.

# zm.prList List a world's pull requests, or fetch one by number. Returns ZeroMind's response: `pulls`, each carrying who opened it, when, its state, and the two ends it joins — source world and branch, target world and branch. Pass a number to fetch a single request instead of the list. Requests are listed on the world they **target**. A fork's outgoing requests appear on the upstream world, not on the fork, so list the world you proposed TO. `zm.prView` re-analyses one request against the current branch heads and says what it changes; this says which requests exist. ``` zm.prList() zm.prList("11111111-2222-3333-4444-555555555555") ```

# zm.prMerge Merge a pull request — the agent-side merge button. Lands the request's work on its target branch and closes it as merged, returning the merge commit and the diff it carried. `merge` (the default) records a merge commit; `squash` collapses the request to one commit; `fast_forward` moves the target head when nothing diverged. A request whose paths conflict is refused rather than merged. `zm.prConflicts` says which paths and what the two sides hold; settle them on the source branch and the request re-analyses on the next read. The world argument is the world the request lives in — the one it targets. ``` zm.prMerge("11111111-2222-3333-4444-555555555555", 3) zm.prMerge(worldGuid, 3, "squash") ```

# zm.prOpen Open a pull request — propose the work on one branch for merging into another. Both ends are addressable, which is what lets a fork propose work back to the world it came from: pass `targetWorld` and the request is opened against that world, sourced from this one. With no target world the request stays inside the world you are in, which is the ordinary branch-to-branch case. A pull request references **published** commits. Work sitting only in your session is not part of one, so `zm.push` first — otherwise the request proposes a commit the other end cannot see. A request lives in, and is numbered by, the world it **targets**, exactly as a forge numbers pull requests on the upstream repository. So a fork's outgoing requests are listed on the world they were opened against, not on the fork. ``` zm.prOpen({ title = "fix the door hinge" }) zm.prOpen({ title = "port the fix", targetWorld = "11111111-2222-3333-4444-555555555555" }) ```

# zm.prView Read one pull request in full — `gh pr view`. Returns the record plus a LIVE re-analysis against the current branch heads: the mergeability verdict (`clean` / `conflicts` / `fast_forwardable` / `up_to_date` / `unrelated`), how many paths conflict, and the diff — every path the request adds, modifies or deletes, with its checksums. Read this before merging. It is what tells you WHAT the request changes; merging without it is merging blind. When it reports conflicts, `zm.prConflicts` says what they are. ``` zm.prView(nil, 1) zm.prView("11111111-2222-3333-4444-555555555555", 3) ```

# zm.pull `git pull`: fetch `origin/<branch>` and merge it into the session branch. With no branch it pulls the session branch's own origin branch. - **Strictly behind**: the session branch fast-forwards to the fetched commit. - **Diverged**: a two-parent merge commit lands, with the same conflict-marker flow as `zm.merge`. Resolve the markers, then `zm.add` + `zm.commit`; `zm.merge("", { abort = true })` abandons it. - **Already contains it**: nothing changes. - `{ ffOnly = true }` refuses anything but a fast-forward. `{ noFf = true }` always makes a merge commit. A local change on a path the pull rewrites refuses it with git's message naming the paths; every other local change stays in the working tree. A scene's unsaved live edits count as a local change to its `scene.json`: a fast-forward that rewrites that scene refuses, naming the scene and how to save or discard the edits, and a merge commit refuses over any scene holding them. `zm.fetch` first shows what a pull would do. Updating an installed asset or a library is not a pull. Use the `zeromind` toolbox for that: `zeromind.updates` lists what has updates, `zeromind.reviewUpdate` shows what one changes, and `zeromind.update` applies it without committing.

# zm.push Publish unpushed commits to ZeroMind, making the world's content available to others. Like a git push, it walks the parent chain from the current commit and publishes the whole unpushed stack oldest-first, so no commit lands before its parent. It returns `{ commitId, verdict }`: `verdict` is `"published"` with the final published commit id in `commitId`, or `"already-published"` when the remote branch already carries every local commit — the state a push asks for, so it comes back as a result rather than a failure. A push only moves the remote branch forward, as git's does: a remote head the branch does not hold is git's `! [rejected] <branch> -> <branch> (fetch first)` and one the branch is behind is `(non-fast-forward)`, so pull first. `force = true` is `git push --force`: a published head moves the remote branch regardless, which needs the Maintainer role on the world; a branch with unpublished commits is refused, so pull first. A refused publish comes back as a failed result rather than aborting the caller, so the reason is inspectable: network errors, a parent that has not been pushed yet, access denials, sign-in problems (which name whether you were never signed in or your sign-in expired, and the recovery step — commits stay local and publish after re-auth). Authentication is read from the credential store; scripts never see the token.

# zm.reset Move the session branch's head — `git reset [--soft|--mixed|--hard] <commit>`, in one shot (no confirmation step). `target` is any revision `zm.revParse` reads, any commit of the world. `{ mode = "soft" }` keeps the index and the tree (the paths the move changed read as staged); `mixed`, the default, unstages and keeps the tree; `hard` unstages and takes the tree to `target`. `zm.reset("HEAD")` unstages everything and `zm.reset("HEAD", { mode = "hard" })` discards your local changes. Reset is non-destructive for history: the commits the head leaves behind become trash entries, and `zm.trash("restore", <handle>)` re-attaches them in chain order (oldest first).

# zm.restore `git restore`. - `zm.restore(path)` takes the working edits on a path back to what it was staged or committed as: the stage where the path is staged, the last commit where it is not, and absence where it is neither. A folder takes every file beneath it back with it, and a deleted path comes back as its committed version. Edited bytes going back to a committed version are snapshotted to trash first (`zm.trash` lists them). `.` restores every path. - `zm.restore(path, { source = "HEAD~1" })` takes the working content to that revision's version instead. - `zm.restore(path, { staged = true })` unstages the path and leaves the working tree as it is; `{ staged = true, worktree = true }` does both. Returns `{ restored, skipped, unstaged }`; a path with nothing to restore is listed under `skipped`.

# zm.revParse `git rev-parse`: the commit a revision names. A revision is `HEAD`, a branch, `origin/<branch>` (as the last fetch recorded it), a commit id or a unique prefix of one, each optionally followed by `~N` (N first parents back), `^` (the first parent) or `^2` (a merge commit's second parent). `zm.revParse("HEAD")` is the head commit.

# shared Module Cross-tool helpers for the `zm` toolbox. Every tool inside this toolbox can pull these in with `require(".shared")`. ## Purpose This module holds the small set of helpers that more than one tool in the toolbox needs — `protect(fn)`, which runs a yield-capable `world.*` mutation under `pcall` and translates any raised Luau error into a clean message. Tools return their raw values (the `tool.assetType` wrapper packages them into the system `ZmToolResult` envelope) and signal failure by raising via `error(message)`; routing the `world.*` call through `protect` keeps the raised message clean. Keep it focused: per-tool implementation stays inside each `<x>.tool/init.luau` (with its own `--!desc` / `--!arg` / `--!return` / `--!example` annotations). ## Usage ```luau local shared = require(".shared") function M.someTool(...) -- Argument-shape failure: raise with a clear message. if badArgs then error("someTool: reason") end -- Runtime mutation: route the yield-capable world.* call through -- protect so the re-raised message is clean (location prefix -- stripped). local ok, result = shared.protect(function() return world.someMutation(...) end) if not ok then error("someTool: " .. tostring(result)) end return result end ``` ## Exports See `init.luau` for the full export surface: - `shared.protect(fn)` — run a yield-capable `world.*` op under `pcall`, returning `(true, value)` on success or `(false, cleanMessage)` if it raised (the Luau `chunk:line:` location prefix is stripped). Every mutating tool routes its `world.*` call through here so the messages it re-raises stay clean.

# zm.stash `git stash`: set your uncommitted changes aside and bring them back. - `zm.stash()` (or `zm.stash("push", { message = "..." })`) saves your changed and staged paths into a stash and takes them back to their committed version. Content a stash records by checksum alone (binary or large files), and files no commit holds, stay in the working tree and are listed under `kept`. - `zm.stash("list")` lists your stashes, newest first; `stash@{0}` is the newest. - `zm.stash("pop")` applies the newest stash and drops it; `zm.stash("apply")` applies it and keeps it; `zm.stash("drop")` drops it (to trash). Each takes a stash as `stash@{n}` or a row id: `zm.stash("pop", "stash@{1}")`. Applying refuses, writing nothing, when a path the stash restores holds a different local change.

# zm.status The active world's working state — the view the shell `zm status` prints, as a table. Returns `world.vcsStatus()`'s `{ dirty, staged, untracked, unmerged, installs, ... }` with `branch` and `head` folded in, `blockers` (every reason a push by this caller would refuse, one entry per class with its subjects and remedy), and `upstream`: the installed content ahead of its upstream — the files you changed in an installed asset, grouped by the world it came from, each entry naming its install `root`. `zm diff <root> upstream` shows those changes and `zm.prCreate` sends them upstream. `opts.stage` reports one of your own staging areas in place of the default one.

# zm.trash The world's shared 7-day trash — what destructive operations threw away: commits a `zm.reset` left behind, working edits `zm.restore` replaced, dropped stashes, removed files. - `zm.trash()` lists the entries; each `row_id` is its handle. - `zm.trash("restore", handle)` recovers one. Commits a reset left behind re-attach in chain order, oldest first. - `zm.trash("empty")` deletes every entry for good.

# guide A guide is a single-file documentation asset: a `<name>.guide/` folder whose body is `guide.md`, surfaced through the `guides` MCP tool, the `man` shell builtin and the Docs panel. Drop one anywhere under `/zero/source/`, a `.package` included, and it shows beside the built-in guides. ## In the Inspector Guide: the guide's word count, its headings, and **Open in Docs**, which opens it in the Docs panel.

# rename Set the name you go by on this world: every engine of the world lists you under it when you are connected through ZeroMind, and this engine does when you are connected directly to its own MCP port. The name comes back when you reconnect, after an engine restart too: the world keeps it for an agent connected through ZeroMind, and this machine keeps it for an agent connected directly to the engine. A name is 1-32 characters of a-z, 0-9, - and _, starting with a letter or digit. Notices addressed to your old name still reach you under the new one. A refused rename reads `rename refused (<code>): <why>`: | Code | When | |------|------| | `name_taken` | Another agent on the world holds the name. The refusal names that agent and the person it works for. | | `invalid_name` | The name is outside the rule above. | | `offline` | The engine holds no world connection right now, so ZeroMind cannot be asked. | | `timeout` | ZeroMind did not answer in time. The rename may still have landed; `whoami` tells which name you go by. | For example, an agent laying out the world's terrain renames itself `terrain`, and from then on the roster, the tool strip and every other agent's `state` block list it under that name.

# roster Everyone on this world: each person with the engines they have open and the agents working for them, each agent with its name, harness and the time of its last call (`last_call_ms`, milliseconds since the Unix epoch). For example, before taking on a part of the world, read the roster to see which agents are already here and what their names say they are working on.

# whoami The name you go by on this world, your caller key (`agent:<name>` once the roster names you) and the display name of the person you work for. For example, an agent that just connected finds it goes by `codex-1`, keys as `agent:codex-1` and works for the person signed in on the engine.

# yaml.module YAML decode + encode for authored engine content. Pure Luau, no engine dependencies — a general parsing library, not data-system plumbing. ```luau local Yaml = require("@builtin::modules.yaml") local doc = Yaml.decode(vfs.read(path)) vfs.write(path, Yaml.encode(doc)) ``` ## Supported subset - Block mappings (`key: value`) and block sequences (`- item`), nested to any depth. - Compact sequence-of-mapping entries (`- path: x` / ` kind: y`). - Flow collections — `{ a: 1, b: 2 }` and `[1, 2, 3]` — single line. - Plain scalars with type inference: `~` / `null` → nil, `true` / `false` → boolean, numeric literals → number, everything else → string. - Single- and double-quoted strings (`''` escapes a literal quote inside a single-quoted string; `\n` `\t` `\r` `\\` `\"` inside a double-quoted one). A quote opens a quoted scalar where a scalar begins — after `key:`, after a `- ` entry marker, or inside a flow collection — so a plain scalar carries an apostrophe as data (`note: the world's rules`). Quoted keys are read in flow mappings. - `#` comments — honored outside quotes, so a `#` inside a quoted string is kept as data. - Literal (`|`) and folded (`>`) block scalars — the bare indicators only. A block scalar's content is literal text: quotes (balanced or not), `#`, `key: value` and `---` inside it are data. - An optional leading `---` document marker. ## Loud-error contract Constructs outside the subset above raise instead of misparsing: anchors/aliases (`&`, `*`), tags (`!`), directives (`%`), multi-document streams (a second `---`), block-scalar chomping/indentation indicators (`|-`, `|+`, `>-`, `|2`, ...), tab indentation, and inconsistent indentation (both block structure and block-scalar bodies). Every error carries the offending line number (`yaml: line N: ...`), so a bad config points straight at the line to fix. Tab indentation is rejected everywhere — including block-scalar body lines whose leading whitespace contains a tab. A tab after the first non-space character of a line is content and passes through. ## API - `Yaml.decode(text: string): any` — decode a YAML document into a Luau value (table, scalar, or nil for an empty document). Raises on malformed input or an unsupported construct. - `Yaml.decodeWithComments(text: string): (any, boolean)` — decode as `decode` does, and report whether the text carries a comment by the decoder's own rule: a `#` at a line's start or after whitespace, outside a quoted scalar and outside a block scalar. Re-encoding the value drops such comments, so an editor that writes a document back reads this first. - `Yaml.encode(value: table): string` — encode a Luau table as YAML (block style, two-space indent, alphabetically sorted keys). Raises on values YAML can't represent (functions, userdata, non-string mapping keys). A top-level empty table encodes to an empty document, which decodes back to `nil` (the YAML empty-document ambiguity).

# interfaces The screen-building skill: author a UI as a styled widget tree the way you write HTML and CSS, register it, and then see it and drive it through the `gui` toolbox rather than reasoning about the tree. Covers the layout and paint model, entrance and idle animation, callbacks that fire in play mode, and the build → capture → play → iterate loop that gets a screen from blank to built.

# debugging Finding out **when** something went wrong in a running world. The job this skill covers is not "what is the current value" — the current value is downstream of the moment that matters. It is: attach an instrument to running code, keep working, and be told the instant the thing happens. It exists because the reflex it replaces does not work. Running something, waiting, and taking a capture aims at a moment you cannot see: seconds pass between the call and the frame, and adding a wait only moves the guess. Polling is the same guess with more steps. Covers: probing a function call, a source line, or a value; using a condition to name the moment rather than every step toward it; reading the state a value was taken in before trusting the value; and cancelling what you armed. The trap it spends the most words on is the expensive one — a right value read in the wrong world, where the match already ended or the scene already swapped, nothing announced it, and every number afterwards means something else.

# assetType runtime The machinery that reads a `<typename>.assetType/behavior.luau` and turns its declarations into live behaviour. A `behavior.luau` is a table of declarations — `ref` methods, `modules` shared code, an `events` schema, a `namePattern`, `refShapes`, and the `onCreate` / `onRegister` / `onChange` / `onDelete` / `validate` / `settingsDefaults` / `settingsCorrections` hooks. None of it runs itself. This is the code that runs it, and it lives here because reading a type's declarations is the **assetType type's own behaviour** — the same way `material.assetType` owns what a `.material` does. ## Sub-modules | Module | Reads | Responsibility | |---|---|---| | `ref.module` | `ref`, `modules` | Builds every `AssetRef` envelope, attaches the shared metatable, and dispatches per-type methods and shared modules onto it. Also owns edit-mode write-behind persistence. | | `create.module` | `onCreate`, `namePattern`, `validate` | Backs `asset.create`: resolves the type, checks the name against its pattern, runs `onCreate` (or clones `template/`), and writes the instance. `validate.module` beside it checks a creation `opts` table against the type's `createSchema`. Before running `onCreate`, resolves the type's settings chain (below) and hands the result to the hook as `opts.settings`. | | `settings.module` | `settings`, `settingsDefaults`, `settingsCorrections` | A type's declared settings schema and where its values live (`type.yaml`'s `settings:` block). `Settings.resolveForCreate` layers the schema's own defaults, the type's own `settingsDefaults(name, opts, asked)` hook (a DEFAULT the schema can't express — a name-derived convention, a fact read off a payload the caller handed it, a value following a field `asked` shows a higher layer naming; any later layer overrides it), the Preset Manager, an importer's settings, the caller's `settings` table, then the type's own `settingsCorrections(values, name, opts)` hook (a CROSS-FIELD CONSTRAINT the schema can't express, applied last over the fully merged values). A correction over a default/preset/importer value lands silently; a correction that would override what the caller's own `settings` table explicitly asked for refuses the creation instead, naming the field and why. Neither hook is ever handed a table to mutate; each returns what it wants changed (`settingsCorrections` may also return a `{ [field]: reason }` table for that refusal message). `Settings.cloneValues` deep-copies a values table — `create.module` hands `onCreate` a copy, never the table it stamps. `Settings.valuesOf` / `writeValues` read and write an asset's own values file. | | `typeYaml.module` | `type.yaml` | The folder a type lives in and its parsed `type.yaml`, decoded once per content version of the file. `settings.module` and `inspector.module` read their blocks through it. `about` / `aboutAt` read a type's `about.yaml` (`intent`, `function`, `usage`), leaving out any key that is empty or still starts with `[[describe]]`; `aboutRows` and `aboutMarkdown` lay the texts out for the Inspector and the `types/<name>` guide. | | `inspector.module` | `type.yaml`'s `inspector:` block | Which inspector a type declares for its assets (`inspector: { type: ... }` or `{ instance: ... }`), and the declaration that file returns — the sections it adds, the generic ones it replaces, and their order — or the problem that kept it from loading. | | `onRegister.module` | `onRegister` | Fires an instance's once-only registration hook — on arrival, on world load, and for `@builtin` library instances. | | `changeDispatch.module` | `onChange`, `onDelete`, `refShapes` | Routes a VFS source write or a folder delete to the enclosing typed asset's type hooks. | | `refShapes.module` | `refShapes`, `ref` | Publishes what every `AssetRef<category>` answers to, so a member read on an asset-typed value is checked against that category's real surface. | | `events.module` | `events` | The per-asset event runtime behind `ref.events`. | | `instantiable.module` | `ref.instantiate` | The instantiation contract an asset type opts into: `root` stands the root entity, `place` applies the base placement opts to one the type adopted, and `result` shapes the `(root, idMap)` every `instantiate` returns. Also registers the `sceneInstantiable` field-constraint validator. | | `declaration.module` | `type.yaml` | The type's decoded declaration, read once and held until a write inside an `.assetType` folder; what every question about a type as a whole reads. | | `previewRecipe.module` | `type.yaml` `preview:` | How an instance's `preview.png` is produced: which of the four recipes (`instantiate`, `image`, `surface`, `custom`) the type declares, and what that recipe needs. | ## Reaching it ```luau local rt = require("@builtin::assetTypes.assetType.shared") rt.ref.loadTypeBehavior("material") ``` Fields resolve lazily. The prelude requires the sub-modules directly, in dependency order (`ref`, then `changeDispatch`, `onRegister.install()`, `refShapes.install()`) — a table that required all six on load would take that ordering away from it.