An evergreen guide for adding support for a new harness (IDE, CLI, or agent
runner). Teaches the invariants — automatic session-start bootstrap, skill
discovery/invocation, tool mapping, the acceptance test — and points at the
closest reference integration shape (shell-hook, in-process plugin,
instructions-file / declared context file) to copy. Covers discovery, build,
local install, tmux-driven verification, distribution, and PR submission, with a
live reference-integration index and a gotchas appendix.
Two non-negotiable rules: (1) never edit skill bodies; (2) everything ships
through the harness's own install mechanism — never edit the user's config. When
a plugin installer strips undeclared files, declare the bootstrap as a recognized
component (a manifest contextFileName-style context file the installer preserves
and the harness loads every session), generated at install time from the live
SKILL.md + tool mapping. Surfaced-skill-description bootstrap is the softer
fallback.
Hardened against real end-to-end ports (Antigravity CLI): shapes can compose; a
fork doesn't inherit its parent's behavior; a hook system != a usable
session-start event; verify @-includes AND context-file preservation with a
marker; web-search the docs and study existing plugins; reverse-engineer
undocumented harnesses; print/headless modes may hang; workspace-trust gates
stall tmux; declared context files survive plugin install while undeclared files
are stripped; skills-path registration is per-harness.
