reader: someone installing or running meow-code on Pi answers: what meow-code provides, what it adds to a session and how to install it kind: reference describes: [@meowshed/meow-code@0.5.0]

@meowshed/meow-code

Holds how Pi changes code, writes a check and debugs a defect: the smallest correct change, the most precise edit, checks seen failing, and a defect reproduced before any cause is offered. Distributed as a Pi package.

Install it

pi install npm:@meowshed/meow-code

The paw executable ships with @meowshed/meow-core alone (REQ-4612): this package's launchers run their subcommands through it, so install the core package beside this one for the binary-backed checks. Without it, every check reports unrun and lets the command through.

pi install npm:@meowshed/meow-core   # carries the binary the launchers run

Installing from this repository's checkout is the development install: it loads the package in place and runs no lifecycle script.

What it adds to a session

Before Pi changes code or writes a check, it loads the meow-code:change skill, which has it:

• make the smallest change that is correct, and never reformat while it changes behaviour;
• read a file before writing to it, and batch reads and edits that don't depend on each other;
• ask a language server about a symbol where the session offers one, and say what a text search can't cover where it offers none;
• prefer a semantic edit for a symbol, a structural one for a mechanical rewrite and a textual one only for a literal;
• read a file's diagnostics after editing it, and take its evidence from your verification stages, never from the diagnostics;
• document every declaration another module or a user can reach, preferring an example the language runs as a check;
• check what it can statically before behaviourally, and behaviourally before by evaluation, and see a check fail before the work that makes it pass;
• report a check that couldn't fail as a defect, and rewrite it instead of adding a second one;
• run mutation testing through the tool you or a pack names, when you ask whether the checks would catch a change.

Before Pi looks for the cause of a bug, a failing check, a crash or a wrong output, it loads the meow-code:debug skill, which has it:

• reproduce the defect first, as small as it can, and keep the reproduction;
• record what the system actually does before offering a cause;
• hold one hypothesis at a time and try to refute it, and bisect once the hypotheses run out;
• close the defect on the reproduction failing before the fix and passing after it, and fix the cause, saying so where it treated only the symptom;
• stop and ask for an amendment where the defect shows a requirement to be wrong, and patch nothing.

You don't invoke either skill yourself: Pi loads it from its description whenever it's about to change code.

What it costs you Each

skill's body loads only when Pi changes code or debugs. The unit ships no program.