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FabledScribe/plugin
bvandeusenandClaude Opus 5 76bf21633e
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feat(guidance): the agent is the judge — stated in the product, not in a rule
I recorded this as project rule 174 first. That was wrong twice over, and the
second reason is the one that matters.

RULE 119 SAYS THIS EXACTLY: guidance about how an agent should behave with
Scribe belongs in `_INSTRUCTIONS`, `plugin/skills/*` or the adapter's static
context, never in the corpus. I read 119 while writing the rule, decided it was
"about authority rather than about using Scribe", and wrote it anyway — which
is the reasoning preference 29 exists to catch, performed in full.

THE REASON THAT MATTERS: a rule in the corpus is true on ONE install. If the
agent being the judge is how Scribe works, every install gets it or none does.
Baked in, it ships. As a rule it was one operator's private note about a
product stance.

WHAT IT SAYS. The agent is the judge of record for the work — what a shape is,
whether a finding holds, whether something is done. Surfacing a finding for the
operator to rule on is the judgment NOT made, however well written up: it reads
as diligence and functions as a backlog. Escalate the acts that are genuinely
theirs — their money, their infrastructure, anything hard to reverse or facing
outward — and keep the decisions. A hard call is still yours; an irreversible
act is still theirs.

And the half that keeps this from becoming the previous defect: JUDGING IS
ATTENDED. An agent reading evidence and recording why is judgment; a threshold
or a sweep reclassifying in bulk with nobody reading is the thing that fills a
ledger with confident nonsense (#4208, and Portal's 35 rows). When the fix for
bad unattended writes is another unattended write, stop.

THE PRODUCT WAS TEACHING THE OPPOSITE. reporting-back's Finding row read
"Symptom · Cause · Size of the fix · **Offer to fix it**". So the behaviour I
was corrected for is the behaviour the skill prescribed — which is the better
argument for fixing it here than any rule could be.

Three surfaces, per 119 and the ownership registry (#4027): `_INSTRUCTIONS`
gets a one-line JUDGE index entry; using-scribe owns the authority and the
attended/unattended distinction; reporting-back owns the report shape. Two
topics rather than one, registered separately in test_guidance_ownership so
trimming one cannot quietly take the other.

Plugin version minted — skills only reach a session when the manifest moves
(#2209).

Rule 174 deleted (trash 074434a2, recoverable).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01821k5B3Ysecp9fNYs92Kuy
2026-09-20 22:54:19 -04:00
..

Scribe plugin for Claude Code

Turns a self-hosted Scribe instance into a first-class Claude Code extension:

  • MCP tools over your notes, tasks, projects, milestones, systems, and rulebook (the scribe server).
  • Session-start push channel — a SessionStart hook injects the active project's live state (from the server) and this adapter's short Claude Code guidance, so Scribe surfaces without being asked. Rules are never preloaded; they arrive by retrieval when your work matches one.
  • Prior-art recall on writes — a PreToolUse hook on Write/Edit checks the file about to be written against your recorded snippets (what's kept at that path, and what resembles the code) and offers them before the helper is rewritten. Titles only, never blocks the edit.
  • The shared Scribe skills — client-neutral Agent Skills, the same files any client's package would ship: using-scribe, writing-plans, reporting-back (reply to the operator in a shape that says where the work stands), systematic-debugging, verification, brainstorming, reusing-code (record and recall reusable code as snippets). Replaces superpowers.
  • Your Scribe Processes as skills — saved Processes are synced into local ~/.claude/skills/scribe-proc-* stubs that auto-surface by relevance; the stub fetches the live procedure via get_process. Refreshed each session and on demand with /scribe:sync.

It is designed so you can uninstall superpowers and depend on Scribe instead of auto-memory — leave auto-memory at its default; Scribe replaces its job by holding the one copy, not by switching it off.

How the pieces divide the work (decision #4027): the Scribe server orients every MCP client and serves live state; the skills in skills/ state every reflex in full and name no client; this plugin is the Claude Code adapter — hooks that deliver at the right moment, /scribe:sync, and the few things only Claude Code needs said (hooks/scribe_static_context.md). Packaging Scribe for another client: see PACKAGING.md.

Install

The plugin ships inside the Scribe app repo, so the marketplace is that repo — you always get the plugin version that matches your Scribe instance.

/plugin marketplace add https://git.fabledsword.com/bvandeusen/FabledScribe.git
/plugin install scribe@scribe-plugin

On install you'll be asked for:

Setting What
Scribe base URL e.g. https://scribe.example.com (no trailing slash)
Scribe API key an fmcp_ key from Settings → API Keys (stored in your OS keychain)
Active project id optional — numeric project id to scope the session-start context

What gets wired

  • plugin.json mcpServers → the scribe MCP server at <base URL>/mcp (Bearer auth).
  • hooks/hooks.json → SessionStart hook (hooks/scribe_session_context.sh), fail-open: if Scribe is unreachable it injects nothing and never blocks the session.
  • hooks/hooks.json → PreToolUse hook on Write|Edit (hooks/scribe_prior_art.sh) → GET /api/plugin/prior-art. Returns additionalContext with no permission decision, so it can inform the write but never stop it; silent when nothing is recorded, which is most of the time. Two framings: a REUSE menu (similar/nearby records), and a SYNC nudge when a snippet records the exact file being edited — "updating the record is part of the edit" — each with its own once-per-session dedup. A third, ledger-fed line names a duplicate family (no canon) or a canon recorded elsewhere for the names being written (its own dedup channel, exclude_derive). Fail-open but not fail-silent: a configured instance that does not answer in time is said, once per outage ("Scribe did not answer … this write went UNCHECKED"), so a session can tell "checked, nothing there" from "never checked"; an answer clears the marker. The local by-name arm needs no server and always runs. Toggle in Settings → Knowledge auto-inject.
  • hooks/hooks.json → PostToolUse hook on Bash (hooks/scribe_after_write.sh): code written through sed/heredocs/scripts never reaches the PreToolUse hook, so this one diffs the working tree after every Bash call (per-session path+blob snapshot; one git status when nothing changed) and runs the same arms on the definitions just written, through the same endpoint and the same dedup channels. additionalContext only; never blocks, and shares the pre-write hook's once-per-outage "did not answer" line (8 s budget here — it runs after the tool, so it gates nothing). The extractor, the prose/data skip list, the local by-name duplicate arm and the outage line are shared in hooks/scribe_defs.sh.
  • hooks/hooks.json → Stop hook (hooks/scribe_report_check.sh): when the turn closed a Scribe task (update_task/create_task with status done), checks the reply that ends it for the completion sections — where the work sits, what needs you, what comes next — and reports the outcome to GET /api/plugin/report-check. If sections are missing it blocks once with the reason the server returns, and records how the rewrite came out; it never blocks twice, and never blocks when the instance did not record the check (unconfigured or unreachable). Outcomes land in the admin logs under category plugin, action report_check.
  • skills/ → the universal process-skills, surfaced by description match.
  • hooks/scribe_sync_processes.sh (a 2nd SessionStart hook) + the /scribe:sync command → generate ~/.claude/skills/scribe-proc-* stubs from your Scribe Processes (via GET /api/plugin/processes); also fail-open, and pruned to match what exists in Scribe.

Notes

  • Do not hand-edit version in .claude-plugin/plugin.json. It is minted from the clock — run python3 scripts/mint_plugin_version.py (or make mint-plugin, where make is installed) after changing anything under plugin/, and commit the result. The installer decides whether to refresh the cache it executes from by comparing that string, so content that ships without a new version reaches the repo and stops there (#2209). CI fails the lane if you forget.
  • The session-start, auto-inject and prior-art hooks need only a read-scoped key; the MCP tools need write scope to create/update. Every hook is a GET for that reason — a read key cannot POST.