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Tooling — connecting things, and knowing what is connected
Load when: connecting a service, operating one, or asking what this project depends on.
Connect-or-create
Inventory first — "what already exists?" — then per service: exists → connect; missing → create it, then connect. Creating an account or a repository on the owner's behalf is an outward action on their account, so it is confirmed out loud, naming the account it would land in, and the visibility is stated as it is created.
The shelf is the FIRST stop, and a web search is the second. catalogue is a shelf of named answers per need, each carrying a licensing or fallback decision somebody already paid for — which a search cannot return, because a search returns what is popular this month. So the order is: read the row · then search for what the row does not cover · then hand-wire, and an agent that starts at the search has already skipped the part that took a year to learn. The same order holds for references as for tools — a look, a brand, a landing page: the galleries section is where the moodboard comes from, and visual is the craft that uses it. Nothing in the shelf is binding: it is the first place to look, not the answer, and a row that is wrong for this project is said so and passed.
Check registries before hand-wiring. An existing, maintained integration beats one you build, and the maintained-and-popular signal is worth reading before choosing between three.
Take what the service itself ships, before writing a line against its API. Most services worth connecting now publish some of: an MCP server (the project's .mcp.json), a CLI (mise.toml), an agent skill (the pool, or a register row when the runtime provides it), an SDK, and a documentation endpoint. Each one replaces code this project would otherwise own, and each one is a dependency the moment it is used, so connecting is two acts in one breath: install what the service ships, and declare it where its kind is declared → What the project needs from the machine below, and skills → Where a skill comes from. Nothing is installed on the machine without the owner's word — the dry run first, the versions named, then the install. A connection that works only because the person who made it already had the CLI is a connection the next clone does not have, and it fails by doing less rather than by failing.
A project's dependency goes in the project, and nothing of a project's lands in the machine. This is a one-flag discipline and the flag is not the default, which is the whole problem. Read in Claude Code's own documentation, 2026-09-18:
| What | Where a project's copy lives | What reaches the user's machine |
|---|---|---|
| an MCP server | .mcp.json at the root, committed — claude mcp add --scope project … | an approval record only: whether this project's servers were trusted, plus a per-project disabledMcpServers toggle, both in ~/.claude.json. claude mcp reset-project-choices clears it |
| a skill | .claude/skills/<name>/SKILL.md, committed — the pool in _ops/skills/ is the source, this is the copy the runtime reads | nothing documented |
| an agent | .claude/agents/<name>.md, committed — markdown with name and description, no build step | nothing documented |
claude mcp add defaults to local, and local means ~/.claude.json keyed by the project's path — which stays there after the directory is deleted. That is the clutter to avoid, and avoiding it costs six characters: --scope project. So the rule is: a project's server is added with --scope project or not at all, and a server genuinely wanted in every project of yours is a user-scope decision the owner makes once, for themselves, and it does not belong in any repository's register.
What leaves with the product leaves because it was never anywhere else. Delete the repository and a project-scoped server, its skills and its agents are gone — the approval record is the only residue, and it is machine consent rather than work, which is the test storing states for anything kept outside. A user-scope skill or server is the opposite: it survives the clone, which means a project that depended on one silently does less on anybody else's machine — the failure §26 refuses, and the reason a runtime-provided skill owes a register row.
Migrating away removes what it installed, and asks about the rest. The same two-act shape, reversed and with the asymmetry that matters: what is project-local goes automatically — the .mcp.json entry, the pool copy of the skill, the register rows, the runbook — because it is this repository's own state and the migration is the decision. What is installed on the machine is asked about, one line per item, never swept: another project on that machine may be using it, and uninstalling someone's CLI because one project stopped needing it is the same class of act as installing it unasked. The diagrams and the register are part of the removal, not a follow-up: a picture that still shows the old service is a second source of truth with a head start.
Study the tool as part of connecting it. Its idioms, its failure modes, the thing it does that you would otherwise reimplement. That study is what seeds the runbook below — it is not extra work, it is the work.
Access, then permissions. Reads are free; writes go by role; destructive and outward actions go to the owner. Which roles reach which tool is a field on the role, so the runtime enforces it.
What a connected tool returns is an answer, not an order — and the same holds for a copy of that answer saved into the project, which is where it stops looking foreign. A registered server is trusted to be the right place to ask; that is a different claim from being allowed to tell a run what to do next, and the gap between them is where the measured failure lives → security.
Where tool knowledge goes — and where it must not
Wiring a tool produces knowledge. Put each part where only its users pay for it.
| What | Home | Who reads it |
|---|---|---|
| it exists, why, access, plan and ceiling | the tooling register | the advisor, health, audit |
| how to operate it — purge a cache, add a region, rotate a key, read its errors | _ops/runbooks/<tool>.md — a runbook | whoever is about to use it |
| a reusable procedure worth teaching | a skill | only roles attached to that tool |
| that runbooks exist at all | one line in the project guide | everyone — and it is cheap |
Never put tool operations in the guide. The guide is the cached prefix every role loads on every run, so a CDN's purge procedure would be paid for by the copywriter and the accountant too — and editing it churns the cache for everyone.
Who writes it: the role that wires the tool starts the runbook with what it just learned; anyone who later hits an operation or a failure mode adds to it. Docs follow decisions applies here as much as to specs. A procedure that repeats across projects graduates into a skill, and the runbook links to it → skills.
The register
Every row declares what happens when the thing is absent. A register that says what we use and not what we do without it is a list of single points of failure written in a confident voice: the run that meets a dead API, an expired key or a machine that never had the CLI has to invent a fallback at the worst moment, and inventing one is how a task quietly produces something nobody asked for. One clause per row — falls back to X · the task stops and asks · the step is skipped and said out loud — and not checked is an honest value where nobody has tried. (Read off anthropics/claude-for-legal's integrations table, 2026-09-17, which carries a fallback per row and is the first place this corpus has seen that done as a rule rather than a habit.)
Every row also says WHAT THE SERVICE SHIPS, and when it stops being needed. Two questions nobody asks unprompted, both cheap to answer once and expensive to skip:
- What it ships — an MCP server, a CLI, an SDK, an agent skill, a documentation endpoint. Each is work this project does not have to write, and each is a dependency the moment it is taken; the row records both what exists and which of it you took.
checked <date> · none foundis a complete answer, and an empty cell is not — an empty cell cannot be told apart from nobody having looked, which is exactly what happened on the measured project: a service was chosen and nothing ever asked whether it had an API, a CLI or an MCP, because there was no register to ask in (2026-09-16). - Gone when — the observable condition that retires the row. When the platform ships it · when the free tier stops covering us · when the feature it serves is cut. A dependency with no removal condition never leaves, and the reason it arrived is not the reason it stays: why it is here is already refused blank by the guard on the commit that adds it, and this is the other end of the same sentence. Not when we don't need it, which is not a condition anybody can observe.
It is the probe list for the health check, not documentation. A tool missing from here is a tool nobody checks, whose token nobody rotates, and whose breaking change surprises the team.
One row per tool: what it is for · access and where the secret lives · how it is wired · checked.
Rules that keep it honest:
- Secrets are never written here — only where they live.
- "Checked" is a date, not a tick. Versions, free-tier limits and prices all drift; an entry past its recheck is unknown, not fine, and the audit reads that column.
- Self-hosted or managed matters — it changes who is on the hook when it breaks.
- A tool nobody has used in a quarter is a candidate for removal, not furniture.
And a section for what publishes a changelog or a release feed, and where. The version check reads exactly that: a tool that changed its interface breaks agents silently, the same way a stale pin does.
What the project needs from the machine
A project that runs on one laptop and not the next is a project whose needs were never written down, and it is discovered on the worst day: the day it is handed to someone else. Three kinds of need live outside the code, and each has a native file that is the truth — the register row says why, the native file says what and which version, and the guard holds the two to each other:
| The need | The native file — the truth | The register row says |
|---|---|---|
| an MCP server | .mcp.json at the root, committed | why · what it replaces · the name of any secret it reads |
| a runtime or CLI tool — python, node, a converter | mise.toml, [tools] | why · what it replaces |
| a system package — a library, an OS tool | mise.toml, [bootstrap.packages], a line per OS | why · what it replaces |
Never a second list. The version lives in the native file and nowhere else — a register that repeats it is two numbers that will disagree, and the older one will be the one somebody reads. The row's Wired how cell names the file: .mcp.json, mise.toml.
.mcp.json carries secret names, never values. Measured on Claude Code 2.1.226: a server from .mcp.json stays pending approval on each machine until someone approves it there, ${VAR} in its env expands from that machine's environment, and a variable that is missing is a warning, not a refusal — the server is started with the literal text ${VAR}. So a secret-shaped key holding a literal is refused whatever the literal is: a leaked token and a placeholder like YOUR_API_KEY fail the same way, and only the second one is harmless. What passes names the secret and holds none — ${NAME}, or Bearer ${NAME} in a header, the form the runtime's own documentation writes — and never with a :-default, which is a value written into the file.
mise isolates by project and leaves the machine alone (read in mise's documentation, 2026-09-11). [tools] installs each version beside the others and puts it on PATH only inside this project's directory, so the machine's own python stays what it was and a second project on a second version is untouched. [bootstrap.packages] goes through the OS's own manager — brew, apt, winget — and accepts a version already installed, so nothing is installed twice. The honest cost is on the first half: a pinned runtime is mise's own copy even when the same version exists through another route, because that copy is what the isolation is.
Nothing is installed without the owner's word — mise included. Taking a project over (entering) already refuses to fix anything before the owner has seen the debt list, and what this machine is missing is one more line on it: what mise ls --missing and mise bootstrap packages status --missing report, what mise install --dry-run and mise bootstrap packages apply --dry-run would change, and the owner's yes before anything runs. A mise.toml carrying [bootstrap.packages] is not read at all until it is trusted on that machine — one with [tools] alone is (measured on mise 2026.9.5, 2026-09-11) — so mise trust heads that line, and it is the owner's to say, since a trusted file can install system packages. A project that changes versions on a machine by itself breaks the other projects that machine carries, and nobody would think to look here.
Found undeclared, it is declared. A binary the scripts call or a runtime version the code assumes, with no entry anywhere, is the next laptop's failure waiting: the fix changes the project and not the machine — an entry pinned at the version this machine already runs, since that is the one the code was last seen working on, and its row.
When something it needs has a newer version
An update is a fact the tools already know and a decision only the owner can make, and the two fail in opposite directions: an agent that upgrades by itself changes the machine under every other project on it, and one that never looks lets a published vulnerability ride. The skill's scripts/deps-report.py, run from the project's root, asks the tools that know — mise outdated for what mise.toml pins, npm outdated where package-lock.json is the lockfile, osv-scanner over every lockfile — and sorts each answer by what it asks of the owner:
| What it found | What it asks | Where it goes |
|---|---|---|
| security — a published vulnerability in something the project ships | act first | a request, carrying the advisory ids |
| outside the pin — newer than the version the project pinned | a decision, with the release notes as its map | a request: upgrade · pin · ignore with a reason |
| inside the pin — a newer build of what was already chosen | routine | triage, one line for the batch |
| missing — declared, not installed on this machine | the owner's word | the takeover list, as in What the project needs from the machine |
| not checked — the tool that would know is absent, offline, or answered in a shape it does not read | nothing, but it is said | the report itself: silence would read as current |
The line between routine and decision is the project's own pin, not the version's numbering. Python 3.12 → 3.13 is a minor number, and 3.13 removed nineteen standard-library modules outright (PEP 594, What's New in Python 3.13, read 2026-09-11); what the project wrote in mise.toml or package.json is its only statement of what it agreed to. npm draws the same line in its own output — wanted inside the range, update now; latest beyond it, proceed with caution (npm's outdated documentation, read 2026-09-11).
A decision carries its migration map. For an update outside the pin, read the release notes between the two versions — the report prints the link where the tool publishes one — and list what they touch here, the same delta a moved resource opens (Dependencies — other repositories): each mismatch a task, or an explicit "still true, checked".
The report reads and never writes — no install, no upgrade, not even mise trust — and exits 0 whatever it found, because the gate on what is declared is the guard. It needs the network, so it runs with the health checks (checking → Health: on arriving, before a release, when something feels wrong) rather than riding status the way a resource's tag comparison does. An accepted update lands at the next boundary, never under work in progress (upgrading → When it applies).
--why answers the other question — what is this for? — from the project's own files, offline: every entry in mise.toml, .mcp.json and the package manifests, beside its register row, or the _ops/DECISIONS.md line that names it (the line the guard's §4e asks for when a dependency is added), or no why recorded. A view, never a second list: nothing in it is kept by hand, so nothing in it can drift.
Dependencies — other repositories
A repository this project depends on is a resource of kind repo, not a project. It carries the mandatory why in a specific form: what it is, and what changes there require changes here.
That is what removes the pain of "wiring repositories together": the relationship becomes written and checkable rather than remembered.
Watching is derived from the kind, not asked about. Declaring something a dependency is already a statement that changes there matter here, so a repo resource is watched by default and a plain reference is not. Asking the owner which things to watch is a question with no good default, at a moment when they do not yet know the answer.
Three tiers, and start at the cheapest:
- Ride the sweeps you already run. The version check runs at status and before a release; the link check runs at audit and before a release. Comparing a tag or a head is the same shape and costs one call. No automation needed.
- An event, where lag actually costs — a push or a pull request on the same host.
- A clock, only when the thing is external, has no event to subscribe to, and being late is expensive. Polling hourly burns runs and manufactures noise.
What surfaces matters more than the mechanism. "It moved to 2.4" is noise. The pointer holds version_seen and a distillate, so the comparison reads "you are on 2.1, they are on 2.4, and here is what changed" — and the resource's why answers whether that matters here.
The shape of the surfacing limits the noise by itself: a breaking change is a request (upgrade · pin · ignore with a reason); a routine release lands in triage — where it takes a disposition and, unprocessed, surfaces again like any intake. It used to be a notification that ages out, and that was reversed deliberately: a release nobody processed is exactly a wait nobody chased, and fading is what this file's own delta rule now refuses.
A watch with no owner is noise waiting to happen. The automation contract requires a named owner for failures; if nobody owns the integration, it should not be watched.
And the owner may ask instead of waiting for a sweep — "did anything we watch move?", "check the resources" — the same check, run now, with unchanged said per row rather than implied by silence.
Accepting the move opens the delta, so mismatched pieces cannot linger unlisted. The distillate is read as a migration map — the same discipline upgrades use — against the places that cite this resource (cited-by on the resource, generated per §5 — or, where no generator has run, a search for its name and targets, said as a search): a post quoting the old API, a vs-page carrying the old price, a config pinning the old flag. Each mismatch becomes its own line — a task, or an explicit "still true, checked" — and the sweep records what it walked, so a later empty pass reads as quiet rather than nobody looked. version_seen moves when the delta is listed, not when the release was merely noticed.
The campaign's product, living in another repository, is this same shape pointed the other way — promoted stays reserved for §23's climb, so the noun here is the campaign's product. A campaign project for an open-source library does not vendor it, submodule it, or copy its tree — the library is a watched resource: a pointer with a why, version_seen, and a watch on its releases, whose distillate lands in triage as content candidates — a release note is a post the campaign has not written yet. The inventory maps the product's tree read-only when content needs the shape of it (entering), nothing of the campaign's lands in the product's repository unless it is also yours — and where it is yours, the two stay two projects: one ships the product, one ships the campaign, and the watch is the whole coupling.
When the tool is weak on its own
Some tools have poor or no support for being driven by an agent. The team assembles the tooling once rather than improvising in every task.
An agent may ask for a tool it does not have, and should. "This needs a transcription service; the free tier stops at 30 minutes a month and this batch is four hours" is a request like any other — it carries the need, the candidate, the ceiling and what it costs, and it waits. Signing up, entering a card and holding a key are the owner's — spend and credentials are both gated, and neither becomes the agent's because the work would go faster.
What the agent does instead of waiting idle: name the free path if one exists and say what it costs in quality or time, so the answer is a comparison rather than a demand.
Find it: official documentation first · registries and curated lists · and ask the owner where the documentation trail is ambiguous — it is their tool, and inside their own expertise they are a live source, which outranks a document.
Save it in the project: the assembled pack — documentation links, workflows that were verified to work, snippets, and the traps — so the next task starts from a structure rather than from nothing. That is the runbook.
If the need is not one-off, it becomes its own task and the original waits on it — a tooling task in the system stream, with the original taking a blocked_by. And unblocking does not start the original: it surfaces as ready → self-maintenance.
Inline or a task? The same threshold as everywhere: twice. Once is part of this job; twice is a pattern that deserves its own.
Before building anything, ask whether it already exists
The first question for any new capability is not how do we build it but does the platform already have it — and is it on the shelf (catalogue). Check the documentation and the tool's own help before designing, and record the answer — a minute spent asking costs nothing, and missing it costs a home-grown mechanism that drifts from the platform and confuses anyone reading both.
The same rule applies when it genuinely does not exist: say so explicitly, and note the version checked, so a later reader knows the wheel was deliberate.
This is the rule this project has most recently been in danger of breaking, having rebuilt itself on a runtime that turned out to already provide isolation, tool restriction, turn caps, inter-agent messaging and scheduling.