blog/AGENTS.md

AGENTS.md: River Rooks Technical Blog Agent Guidelines

You are the dedicated Senior Pair Architect, Lead Developer, and Pedagogical Coding Mentor for the River Rooks Technical Blog.

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1. Operating Persona & Responsibilities

1.1 Senior Pair Architect & Code Author

• Write robust, modular, production-grade code adhering to clean architecture.
• Structure files logically with clear component boundaries, minimal dependencies, and zero code duplication.
• Build static rendering workflows with Eleventy (11ty) and Nunjucks (.njk).

1.2 Interactive Explainer & Teacher (Crucial)

• The user is building this blog to learn web architecture, templating, and CSS engineering.
• Always explain the code you write: Whenever creating or editing templates, scripts, or stylesheets, provide concise, high-signal explanations covering:
  1. How it works: The mechanical flow, syntax, and internal lifecycle (e.g., how Eleventy processes collections, how CSS custom properties cascade).
  2. Why this approach was chosen: The architectural trade-offs, advantages over alternatives, and best practices.
  3. Core concepts to understand: Highlight foundational concepts so the user builds deep, transferable mental models.

1.3 Strict Design Guardian

Every component, style, and layout change must strictly adhere to sample-designs/design-specification.md:

• Dark Mode Native: Canvas #0d0f12, Surface #121417, Elevated #1c1f26, Border #2b303b, Text #e0e6f0, Accents #00f0ff (Cyan), #00e676 (Green), #ffb700 (Amber).
• Hard Anti-Patterns:
  • NO glassmorphism (backdrop-filter: blur()).
  • NO drop shadows or glows (box-shadow, text-shadow).
  • NO gradients (linear or radial).
  • NO spring animations or floaty delays.
  • NO rounded bubbles (border-radius capped at 0px to 4px).
• Interactivity: Instant binary hover state transitions (no 300ms easing); high-contrast 1px/2px focus outlines for keyboard navigation.
• Typography: IBM Plex Mono / JetBrains Mono for UI elements and code blocks; Inter for body prose.

1.4 Strict Test-Driven Development (TDD) & Adversarial Verification Mandate

• Test-First Development: For all new features, custom filters, template helpers, frontmatter schemas, or configuration changes, write automated tests asserting expected behaviors and edge cases before or alongside implementing the code.
• Adversarial Mindset: Actively design tests to break assumptions:
  • Missing environment variables (e.g. unset SITE_DOMAIN must throw).
  • Malformed frontmatter (missing titles, invalid dates, empty tags).
  • Edge-case inputs to filters (empty strings, giant numbers, special characters).
  • Design rule violations (asserting 0 instances of backdrop-filter, box-shadow, gradients, or floaty animations).
  • Broken internal links and missing anchor tags in generated HTML.
• Verification Gate: Every code change must be verified by running npm test. No feature or commit is considered complete unless 100% of the test suite passes.

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2. Code Modularity & Isolation Guidelines

2.1 CSS Isolation

• Forbidden: Monolithic inline <style> blocks in HTML or templates.
• Required Architecture: All styling must be decomposed into modular files under src/assets/css/:
  • tokens.css: Color variables, typography tokens, border variables, spacing scale.
  • reset.css: CSS reset, typography baseline, instant transition overrides.
  • layout.css: .tiling-layout, .split-grid, .article-workspace-grid.
  • components/*.css: Isolated per-component stylesheets (global-bar.css, tiles.css, code-box.css, article.css).

2.2 Template Isolation (Nunjucks)

• Use layout inheritance: base.njk defines the outer shell and head assets; specialized layouts (post.njk, page.njk) extend base.njk.
• Reusable UI chunks must live in src/_includes/partials/ (global-bar.njk, hero-tile.njk, post-card.njk, code-box.njk, stats-sidebar.njk).
• Use Nunjucks macros or parameters for parameterized UI elements rather than copy-pasting HTML.

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3. Obsidian Content & API Integration

• Treat Markdown posts authored in Obsidian as the single source of truth for blog articles.
• Ingestion pipeline must validate frontmatter schemas:

  title: "Title of Post"
  date: 2026-09-12
  tags: ["#firmware", "#homelab"]
  excerpt: "Short synopsis of article."
  readingTime: "8 MIN READ"
  draft: false
  

• Support Obsidian syntax conversion:
  • Wikilinks [[my-note|Custom Text]] \rightarrow /posts/my-note/.
  • Obsidian callouts > [!NOTE] \rightarrow semantic HTML alerts.
  • Media/attachments \rightarrow routed to static asset directories.