coding-standard

What it does

Guides an agent to create or update coding standards for the current project. It covers determining mode (creating new, converting existing, or updating), evaluating necessity with documented criteria, discovering project structure and taxonomy, gathering contextual information, and writing the standard using a template and a file-name/taxonomy scheme. It enforces not to substitute automated tooling, to consider YAGNI and real usage evidence, and to place the resulting standard under a structured path and index files. It specifies steps for metadata filling, path glob approvals, and integration into per-file-type index files under a claude rules directory. It references various project discovery sources and tools, and prescribes interacting with the user for taxonomy placement and path globs.

How it works

• Determine Mode based on user input: creating new (proposed), converting existing (accepted), or updating (read existing standard).
• Evaluate appropriateness by checking if the standard governs aspects that are better handled by tooling or are well-known conventions; if so, warn user and possibly stop.
• Discover project structure: locate coding-standards directory via project docs, decide taxonomy, and enumerate existing standards to infer format and file naming.
• Gather context: identify topic, scope, and motivation from user input; if unclear, prompt with questions.
• Launch context gathering agents to collect correct-usage candidates, what-to-avoid candidates, and inconsistencies, then merge results for Step 6.
• Write the coding standard: obtain readability guidance, copy the template, choose a file name using taxonomy (top-level, optional second-level, hyphenated name), place in the Step 3 determined directory, fill metadata including Status, Applies To, and timestamps, and propose paths globs for user approval.
• Define paths: propose a paths: glob list to determine which file globs the standard governs, to be used by per-file-type index files under .claude/rules/coding-standards/.

When to use it

Use when creating new coding standards from scratch, converting an existing document into a coding standard, or updating an existing coding standard. It should not be used for architectural decision records, feature or system documentation, open-ended research, or operational runbooks.

What it can touch

• Tools: Read, Write, Edit, Glob, Grep, Agent, Bash(mkdir *), Bash(find *).
• It interacts with project files, standards documents, templates, and the per-file-type index files under .claude/rules/coding-standards/.

Caveats

• Does not create ADRs or feature/system documentation.
• Requires user input for taxonomy placement and for approving the proposed paths/globs.
• Follows frontmatter-provided allowed-tools and project context; depends on project discovery documents and existing standards for format alignment.