okf-mcp 1.2.0 → 1.3.0

data/.okf/design/the-tool-set.md

@@ -0,0 +1,426 @@
+---
+type: Capability
+title: MCP server (okf-mcp)
+description: The kernel's proven capabilities projected onto the Model Context Protocol — fourteen read-only tools, concepts as resources, and the two consuming prompts, for any MCP-capable agent host.
+resource: gems/okf-mcp/lib/okf/mcp/server.rb
+tags: [mcp, serve, agent, registry, search]
+generated:
+  by: human:maintainer
+  at: 2026-08-14T12:00:00Z
+---
+
+
+The tools this argues for are catalogued in [tools](/capabilities/tools.md);
+what implements them is [the server definition](/structure/server-definition.md).
+
+# Overview
+
+`okf-mcp` is the **fourth surface** beside the CLI (`@okf cli`), the
+graph server (`@okf capabilities/graph-server`) and the library API (`@okf capabilities/library-api`): a
+sibling gem that maps MCP tool calls onto the kernel's library so any
+MCP-capable host — Claude Desktop, Claude Code, anything speaking the protocol
+— can discover, orient in, search, and read the bundles on a machine. It is
+judged by one rule: it inherits the existing contracts or it is drift. Nothing
+is reimplemented — every tool is a library call, and logic a tool needs that
+the kernel lacks lands in the kernel first, where the other three surfaces get
+it too.
+
+The `status`/`trust` filters keep one rule across surfaces by *where they
+narrow*: on `catalog` they run through the kernel's `Bundle::RowFilter` like
+every row filter, but on `search` they resolve **through the catalog** — a
+search row carries what the engine matched on, and the §5 families are not
+among it, so handing them to the row filter would read as absent and match
+nothing. The tool instead asks the catalog which ids qualify, per bundle, and
+keeps the rows that survive: the same predicate underneath, so a `trust` that
+narrows `catalog` narrows `search` identically. The first cut was the
+two-line fix — add the keys to the filter — and it shipped the worse failure:
+a schema that accepts the argument and an answer that silently matches
+nothing.
+
+The `tags`/`types`/`stats` trio closes the read-view gap the parity audit
+priced, on the kernel-first path: `Bundle#tag_groups` and `Bundle#stats`
+were extracted from the CLI verbs so the counting rules have one home, and
+both shells consume them. `files` is deliberately not a tool — `index`'s
+per-directory listing and `catalog`'s projection already carry its whole
+answer, and it would have been the first tool whose answer two others hold
+whole; tool-list weight is a cost a host pays on every conversation.
+
+The `references` tool is the §6.3 inventory the kernel's verb answers —
+notably the one lens that sees a bundle's *non-markdown* files (a `.py`
+attester, a `.sql` computation), with each file's citing concepts and every
+pointer into `references/` that resolves to nothing, the bare-path miss named
+with its leading-slash fix. It landed here the way every capability does:
+kernel first (`Bundle::References`), then a thin projection.
+
+# Identity is the kernel registry's
+
+Every tool takes a `bundle` argument that is a **registry slug** — the same
+identity `@slug` resolves at the CLI and `/b/<slug>/` mounts on the
+hub (`@okf capabilities/bundles-manager`). One name across all four surfaces, and a slug is
+only ever a key into the served map: no tool opens a path from a request.
+
+**One name across the fourteen tools, too**, which took a second pass. `search` is
+the only one that accepts a *set*, and it announced that in the argument's name
+— `bundles` against nine `bundle`s. The plural was a signal nobody could act
+on: an MCP host's unknown property is refused by the schema before any okf
+sentence can be written, so a caller that had just used `dirs(bundle:)` got
+back "object property at `/bundle` is a disallowed additional property" and no
+hint. The type already declares that it takes an array, and the
+CLI (`@okf cli`) spells the identity slot identically for every verb —
+`okf search <dir|@slug…>` beside `okf lint <dir|@slug>`. Renamed before the
+first release, on the same rule the `exe/okf-mcp` deletion followed: **a name
+in the public surface is a compatibility promise from the moment it ships**,
+and an alias would have been the second spelling that deletion refused. It also
+retired a guard rather than adding one — a test existed only to stop the
+near-miss from silently widening a search to every bundle, and the asymmetry
+that made that possible is gone. Argv
+roots are the allowlist (`okf mcp <dir> @slug …`), slugged by the
+registry's (`@okf registry`) own normalization with registered slugs reserved
+before basenames are deduped; no argv serves the active registry — the
+project-local discovery, `$OKF_HOME` fallback and `OKF_NO_DISCOVERY` lever
+included, for free, by loading through it. Groups fan out for `search` and are
+refused by every single-bundle tool (the second-bundle rule by another
+spelling); `"*"` tolerates a vanished directory and names the skip in the
+payload, while naming one bundle demands it exist.
+
+**The allowlist is closed at boot, and that is a property of the object, not a
+promise in a comment.** Resolving an `@ref` consults the kernel registry — and
+the first version then *kept* it, which quietly made a request-time door out of
+a boot-time convenience: a group slug handed to `search` expanded through the
+retained registry and returned bodies from bundles the operator had
+deliberately not served. The fix is structural rather than a check: argv mode
+does not carry the registry into the instance at all, so there is nothing to
+expand through. Groups are a registry-mode identity, and in argv mode they have
+already fanned out to their leaves by the time any tool runs. The general
+shape, worth carrying to the next surface: **a capability held "just to answer
+questions" is reachable by anything that can ask one.**
+
+# The long-lived holder's branch
+
+The search (`@okf capabilities/search`) capability's lifecycle asymmetry, honored from the
+other side: a one-shot CLI gets the scan, a long-lived holder gets the
+prepared corpus. okf-mcp holds one parsed bundle per root, re-read only when
+the on-disk fingerprint moves — bodies are always live and canonical — and one
+shared `Search.prepare` corpus per searched set for index queries, built on
+first use and **dropped when any member's fingerprint moves** (a held index
+outliving its set is a wrong answer, not a slow one — the hub's contract).
+
+The **identity map obeys the same rule**, which it did not at first. Served by
+the registry (`@okf registry`), the set of bundles was a boot snapshot — as the
+hub's (`@okf capabilities/bundles-manager`) *mounted* set still is, so this was consistency
+rather than oversight — and three of the four ways it went stale were loud: an
+unknown slug names what it knows. The fourth was not. An entry repointed at a
+new directory kept answering from the old one under the current slug, which is
+the silent wrong answer this project refuses everywhere else. The fix needed no
+new mechanism, only the one already here: `stat` the registry file, re-read on
+a moved fingerprint. Argv mode is untouched and not by a flag — it never
+carried the kernel registry, so there is nothing to re-read and no way to
+widen. A file that cannot be read or parsed keeps the last good set *without*
+latching its stamp, so a transient truncation is survived rather than made
+permanent until restart.
+
+**The stamp watches every file the registry reads, not just its own.** okf's
+registry can `link` another registry file, and that file's bundles resolve into
+the served set — so a stamp over one path meant an `okf registry set` in the
+linked file was never seen, and this server kept answering about the set it
+booted with. That is the same silent wrong answer the rule above exists to
+refuse, arriving through a second door. The link list comes from the kernel, so
+adding or dropping a link moves the first path's stamp and the next pass watches
+the new set; nothing has to be registered here.
+
+The two kinds of file are watched under **different rules**, and the asymmetry is
+the whole of it. This server's own registry going unreadable answers `nil`, which
+holds the last good set — the paragraph above. A linked file is a pointer's
+target, and okf already treats a missing one as *resolves to nothing, reported*;
+following that here means a vanished target drops its bundles rather than
+freezing them. Riding out an error and following a state change are different
+jobs, and one stamp had to do both.
+<!-- rule:okf-mcp-stamp-watches-links -->
+
+Four consequences of that rule had to be chased down after it landed. Two are
+the same mistake in different clothes — **something else was still a boot
+snapshot** — and two are what a *movable* served set costs a cache that was
+written for a fixed one. The residency held one parsed bundle per root and never
+evicted, which was bounded only by the set being fixed at boot; it is pruned to
+the served set whenever the set *moves* now — not on every request, which took
+the residency and corpus locks and queued every unrelated call behind whatever
+index build another host was paying for — since an operator repointing entries
+otherwise retains every root the registry has ever named — and the prune
+reaches the corpus cache too, which pins the same parsed bundles plus a
+prepared index over each: its LRU evicts only on an index query, so a
+scan-only workload would have held a dropped root's corpus forever. And the on-disk
+fingerprint is taken once per root per request rather than per ask: freshness is
+a question *between* requests, and asking it three times inside one cost three
+full-tree walks under the residency lock (`search` on the index engine measured
+three, now one). Both hang off the request seam, which is the two public
+entry points and deliberately not `handle_request` — the JSON-RPC layer treats
+the handler block as a lookup and calls what it returns afterwards, so a wrapper
+there encloses nothing. The resource list was computed once and handed to the SDK as a
+fixed array, so a bundle registered afterwards was never advertised and a
+removed one stayed advertised until a read of the very URI we published came
+back "unknown bundle" — it is derived per `resources/list` now, at the one
+`stat` per bundle it always cost. And the *stamp itself* was taken after the
+boot read rather than before it, so a write landing in between was recorded as
+already-seen: entries from before it, fingerprint from after, and nothing to do
+until some further write moved the fingerprint again. Booting stamps nothing
+now; the first call re-reads. A stamp is a claim about a file you have already
+read, and it may never be taken later than the read it labels.
+Federation runs through `Search.across`/one corpus, so BM25 scores are
+comparable by construction. The engine doctrine is the CLI's exactly: scan by
+default, `engine: "index"` opt-in, `fuzzy` implying the index, `regexp` on the
+scan, incompatible pairs refused naming the fix.
+
+# Bounded outputs, honest errors
+
+Every list output carries a visible `total` — `search` caps at 20 rows,
+`catalog` pages at 200, rollups cap at 25 with `other_*` remainders, `index`
+descends one level unless asked, and `graph` serves three views that never
+carry bodies (the dump anti-pattern stays unreachable).
+
+**A `total` bounds nothing unless it counts the thing that grows.** `log`
+carried one from the start and was the one unbounded read on the surface: it
+counted log *files*, so `total: 1` sat above this repo's entire 119,863-byte
+history — the answer to "what changed recently" scaling with the project's age
+rather than the question. The pre-release ROI eval found it, and on the same
+recommended path the instructions name. It now returns the newest three
+date-grouped entries per file (§9's own structure) with each file's `total` and
+`returned`, which cut that answer to 13,491 bytes and a whole eval session in
+half. The split stays here rather than in the kernel because bounding for a
+context window is this surface's problem alone — the graph server's Log panel (`@okf capabilities/graph-server`) wants the whole file and scrolls it. The
+general shape: **a bound that counts containers instead of contents reads as
+bounded and is not**, which is the same false-comfort class as a capability
+declared by default.
+
+That shape kept producing instances, each found by review rather than by use.
+§9 fixes no heading level, so a log grouped under `###` is conformant and the
+`## ` split cannot see it: the file came back *whole* under `total: 0`, an
+unbounded read advertising itself as empty, and `limit` could not reach the
+path at all. The first fix counted it as one indivisible entry cut by size —
+and left the same read alive one shape over, where a whole history under a
+single `## ` heading split into one "entry" and came back whole behind a
+`total: 1` that read as bounded. The byte budget `limit` scales now caps
+*every* answer, announced with `truncated` — inventing a boundary would be
+inventing a format, but declaring a bound is only honest. Both of the answer's
+units keep their word: the budget is enforced in **bytes** as announced (a
+character count let a multibyte log through at up to 4x the cap, silently),
+and `returned` is recounted from what *survived* the cut, never claiming an
+entry whose heading the cut removed. A scaffolded title with no entries yet
+reports the zero it holds instead of one entry of history that does not exist
+— wherever whitespace put the title. And `total` itself meant two things: the rows
+matched in `catalog`/`search`, the whole bundle's directory count in
+`dirs`/`index`. Each defensible alone; as a set it made the larger number read
+as rows withheld from a tool that takes no limit. One key, one question.
+
+**An empty answer that reads like a real one is the same failure wearing
+zero.** `dirs` and `index` refused a `dir` naming no directory; `catalog` and
+`search` answered `total: 0` to it. Worst for `root` — the spelling the
+CLI (`@okf cli`) and the skill (`@okf capabilities/agent-skill`) both teach — where an agent
+asked for the bundle root, was told zero, and reported that the bundle root
+holds nothing. Every tool taking a `dir` refuses one now, and across bundles the
+refusal is a fact about the searched *set*: a directory one of three bundles has
+still filters, because otherwise the ordinary cross-bundle ask would break.
+The set consulted is `Bundle#directories` — the same list the `dirs` rows are
+built from — because the refusal's own advice is "orient with dirs", and a
+first cut that derived it from the raw file list accepted directories `dirs`
+refuses to list (one holding only a file the reader skipped). One question,
+one source, on both sides of the refusal. The message carries the one nuance
+the source cannot: a directory standing on disk but holding only unparseable
+files is refused as exactly that — "holds only files the reader could not
+parse", pointing at `validate` — because "no directory" would be false about
+the filesystem and sends the caller off to re-spell a name that was correct
+when the fix is repairing the files.
+
+Kernel refusals become
+`isError` tool responses carrying the kernel's own sentences; the tool
+descriptions carry the skill's retrieval doctrine (orient with `dirs`, descend
+with `index`, search for pointed questions, read only winners), because they
+are the only playbook a Desktop host ever sees. Two prompts — the consuming
+pair — restate that doctrine in full, in tool vocabulary; why only two is the
+section below.
+
+# One entry point: the `okf mcp` verb
+
+The gem is separate because it has to be: the `mcp` SDK's floor is 2.7 against
+the kernel's 2.4, and it brings five transitive dependencies to a tool whose
+runtime set is deliberately three. Neither fact argues for a separate
+*command*, and conflating the two questions is what left `okf mcp` unbuilt at
+0.1.0. The extension seam (`@okf-eco design/extension-points`) exists precisely so
+the dependency stays on the addon's side of the line: `okf-mcp/lib/okf/plugin.rb`
+registers the verb, the baseline names nothing, and a 2.4 machine simply cannot
+install the gem (`required_ruby_version` refuses). The kernel floor is the same
+kind of promise and easier to break silently: the gemspec must name the okf
+release that ships every API the shell calls (`>= 1.13`, for
+`Bundle#directories`), because the monorepo's path pin satisfies any floor and
+hides one that lies — the declared minimum admitted a kernel the code raised
+NoMethodError against, and no test can notice without installing the old gem.
+So the verb is free, and what
+it buys is discoverability — the server appears in `okf help` under *installed
+extensions* on the machines that have it, rather than waiting to be known about.
+
+Once the verb existed, the `exe/okf-mcp` beside it was a second name for the
+same `CLI.run` — one more thing to install, document, spell correctly in a host
+config and keep working. It went, before the first release, while removing a
+name still cost nobody anything; after one it would have been a break for every
+config that spelled it. The generalizable half is the timing, not the deletion:
+**an entry point is a compatibility promise from the moment it ships**, so the
+window for having second thoughts closes at the first release, not at the first
+complaint.
+
+Three obligations come with routing a protocol server through a CLI dispatcher.
+**Stdout stays pure**: the kernel's dispatch path writes plugin diagnostics and
+unknown-verb refusals to stderr, never stdout, and `MCP::CLI` now takes the
+human channel as a parameter instead of writing to `$stdout` — so the verb
+honors the injected streams and no boot line can corrupt the first frame. A
+spawned test asserts the first byte on stdout is a JSON-RPC frame. **The SDK
+loads inside `#call`**, not at the top of the plugin file, because discovery
+requires that file for `okf help` and for every unknown verb; a `require` at
+load time would charge every one of those runs for a server nobody asked for.
+**The exit contract is structural.** Boot and serve are separate phases in the
+verb itself: everything that can fail as an operator mistake — argv, the
+registry, the HTTP bind — happens under a rescue that answers exit 2 with one
+line, and nothing raised while serving can reach it. On stdio the two hang-up
+errnos are the session's normal end, exit 0; any other mid-serve errno
+propagates as the crash it is. Diagnostics are best-effort throughout, because
+a dead stderr must not decide a server's fate: before the split, the boot
+rescue's own print re-raised EPIPE as a backtrace for a normal hang-up, and a
+lost `--http` boot line read as a clean exit 0 for a server that never started
+accepting.
+
+# What the protocol offers that tools do not
+
+Ten tools mapped the CLI's read verbs and stopped there, which left most of MCP
+unused. Three additions came from comparing the surface against the protocol
+rather than against the CLI.
+
+**Resources** are the one affordance a tool call cannot provide: a host can
+*attach* a document to the context itself, without the model deciding to fetch
+it. Every bundle with a root `index.md` is `okf://<slug>`; every concept is
+covered by the template `okf://{bundle}/{id}`. Concepts are deliberately *not*
+enumerated — that would read every bundle at boot, the eager work the residency
+layer exists to avoid, and would freeze a list the fingerprint check keeps
+honest. The template is signage only: the SDK binds a variable to `[^/]+` and
+every OKF id below the root carries a slash, so the parsing is ours. The
+allowlist holds on this surface too — a URI is not a path, and a slug in one is
+still only a key into the served map.
+
+**Completions** make the template browsable instead of a shape you must already
+know, and they are where containment is easiest to lose: an unserved bundle, an
+unknown argument and a missing context all complete to nothing, so no
+completion can confirm what argv did not serve.
+
+**Structured output** ends the blob: every JSON tool declares its shape and
+emits `structuredContent` beside the text. Declaring a shape is also what
+exposes what the shape leaves out — `search` named its query, its bundles and
+its rows, and not the **engine that answered**, which `fuzzy` selects without
+being asked. Nothing in the result recovers it: the scan's integer count and
+the index's BM25 float both round to a number. So a miss under the index's
+tokenizer (`@okf capabilities/search`) — a shattered identifier, a documented recall hole —
+was indistinguishable from a fact the bundle does not hold, which is the
+silent wrong answer again in its quietest form. The schemas are proven rather than
+asserted — the suite runs every tool through every variant with the SDK's
+result validation switched on, while production leaves it off, because a schema
+bug should fail a test rather than turn a working tool into a runtime error.
+
+The honesty rule the `readOnlyHint` annotations already followed turned out to
+be broken at the handshake: passing no `capabilities:` inherited the SDK's
+default, which announced `resources` while `resources/list` answered `[]`,
+`logging` that nothing emitted through, and `listChanged` on lists nothing
+notifies about. Declaring them explicitly is the fix, and the general shape is
+the same one the containment hole taught: **a default you did not choose is
+still a claim you made.**
+
+`listChanged` stays undeclared even now that the resource list genuinely moves,
+because the test is whether anything *notifies*, not whether anything changes.
+A host that re-lists sees the current set; one that caches the boot listing is
+stale until it asks again. Declaring the capability is what would fix that, and
+it waits on something actually sending the notification — announcing it first
+would only invite a host to wait for one that never comes.
+
+# The prompts are the consuming pair, in tool vocabulary
+
+The prompt surface took three cuts to find its principle. Four of the
+skill's (`@okf capabilities/agent-skill`) nine playbooks shipped first, selected by nothing
+better than their names resembling tools. The second cut served all eight
+(everything but `doctor`, whose premise — install the CLI — anything reaching
+this server has disproved), on the argument that **a prompt is instructions,
+not a capability**: the writing a playbook describes is done by the host's own
+tools, so the read-only posture excluded nothing.
+
+That argument is true and was still the wrong test, because it never asked
+*whose* instructions they were. Every playbook speaks in `okf …` invocations,
+half dead-end a CLI-less host at "install the CLI first" (`menu`'s step 1
+literally ends "Everything below needs the CLI"), six link on into a reference
+tree this server does not serve — and five teach authoring, a mission every
+tool here refuses. To the host this surface exists for, they taught a
+vocabulary it cannot use toward work it cannot do. The right test is the
+mission: this server makes a client an expert **consumer** of bundles, so it
+serves the two consuming playbooks — `okf-search` and `okf-consume`, in
+`SKILL.md`'s own order — rewritten against the tools (`list_bundles`, `dirs`,
+`index`, `search`, `read_concept`, `log`, `graph`), with the engine doctrine
+and the anti-patterns carried over in the tools' argument spellings. A test
+pins the voice: every tool the texts name must exist on the wire, and no
+backticked CLI invocation survives.
+
+The rewrite has a real cost, accepted knowingly: the texts are okf-mcp's own
+(`lib/okf/mcp/prompts/`), no longer read from the installed kernel, so a
+doctrine change in the skill must be carried here by hand. What it bought is
+that the prompts work where they are served — and it dissolved the version-skew
+failure mode the old path carried, where a kernel that renamed a playbook left
+this server advertising a file that is gone. Authoring stays with the skill,
+installed where a filesystem and the CLI actually are.
+
+# Transports and posture
+
+One server definition, two transports: stdio (default — each host spawns its
+own process, boot line on stderr) and `--http` — Streamable HTTP in stateless
+JSON mode on the WEBrick the kernel already ships. A third hosting, not a
+third transport: `OKF::MCP.app` hands the same definition and stateless
+transport to any Rack server a `config.ru` names — the server is the
+reader's dependency, never this gem's, so the no-rackup position holds while
+puma and its kin stop being closed doors. The seam inherits this section's
+whole posture verbatim: the allowlist arguments feed the same DNS-rebinding
+guard, and a Rack server bound beyond loopback publishes every served bundle
+with no authentication, exactly as `--bind` does.
+
+**The one response WEBrick cannot buffer.** The SDK answers the modern
+lifecycle's `subscriptions/listen` with a Rack streaming body — a callable
+that writes SSE frames as they happen and *returns immediately*, having
+registered the stream and started its keepalive thread. WEBrick's proc-body
+path ends the response the moment the proc returns, so the bridge adapts by
+parking: the handler thread waits inside the stream object until the SDK ends
+the stream — a dead peer's `EPIPE` out of a keepalive write, or the
+transport's close at shutdown. Two consequences are load-bearing. Teardown
+must close the transport *before* WEBrick, because WEBrick's shutdown joins
+its connection threads and would hang on any open stream (and on Ruby 2.7 a
+signal trap may not take the transport's mutex, so the trap hands teardown to
+a thread). And the stream cap is this bridge's own — 32, far under the SDK's
+1000 default — because here every stream parks a thread *and* holds one of
+WEBrick's 100 connection tokens; at the SDK default, tool calls would queue
+behind held streams. A constant, not a flag: zero-config is this mode's
+posture, and an operator who needs more streams has a Rack server, where they
+cost no thread. With no `listChanged` and no `subscribe` among the declared
+capabilities, the honored filter is always empty — a listen stream here
+carries its acknowledgement and keepalives, never a notification, and the
+tests pin that as the conformant answer rather than treating it as a reason
+to refuse the method.
+
+**What the Host allowlist is, and is not.** It feeds the SDK's DNS-rebinding
+protection: a browser walked into this port by a page the reader never meant to
+give it to. It is *not* access control, because a client that is not a browser
+sets `Host` to whatever it likes, and there is no authentication behind it. So
+`--bind 0.0.0.0` publishes every served bundle to anything that can reach the
+port, and the boot line warns in those words rather than printing a URL that
+reads as safe to share. Selling the allowlist as the security story would be
+the same overselling the extension seam (`@okf-eco design/extension-points`)
+refuses for the `okf-*` prefix — the false confidence is worse than no rule.
+
+Binding publicly is nonetheless allowed, matching the
+graph server (`@okf capabilities/graph-server`): its read surface follows any bind too, and
+only the *write* surface refuses, with **no flag that says otherwise**. The
+surface is read-only by construction (`readOnlyHint` on every tool — fourteen
+today),
+so it sits entirely on the permitted side of that line. The capture write-back
+— one narrow tool through the kernel's validating writer, opt-in per bundle —
+inherits the refusal verbatim when it lands: **loopback only, no override.**
+Recorded here while the write surface does not exist, because that is the only
+moment the boundary is free to draw.

data/.okf/index.md

@@ -0,0 +1,37 @@
+---
+okf_version: "0.2"
+---
+
+# okf-mcp knowledge bundle
+
+**okf-mcp** is the MCP shell over the okf kernel (`@okf`): any MCP-capable agent
+host can discover, orient in, search and read Open Knowledge Format bundles over
+stdio or Streamable HTTP. This bundle is the gem's structural documentation —
+what the code is, where each responsibility lives, and the rules a change has to
+keep.
+
+It is written to be read *before* opening `lib/`, so an agent about to add a
+tool, a transport or a test does not re-derive the layering, and does not
+rebuild something the kernel or this shell already answers. `AGENTS.md` beside
+it is now only the contract and the commands; everything it used to restate
+about the code lives here, once.
+
+The **argument** for the server — why each tool exists, the bounded-output
+doctrine, the posture — is [the tool set](design/the-tool-set.md). It used to
+live in the repository's root bundle, back when that bundle was the kernel's and
+described every surface; it came here when the root became the ecosystem's map.
+What a *user* does with the gem stays the README's.
+
+`structure/` is pinned: `test/unit/bundle_catalog_test.rb` fails when a file
+under `lib/` is named by no concept, or when a concept names a file that is
+gone. The tree is the truth and this bundle is the claim, so the two cannot
+drift quietly.
+
+* [Overview](overview.md) - The gem at a glance: the one rule, the four layers, and what it deliberately is not.
+
+# Areas
+
+* [Structure](structure/) - Every file under `lib/`, grouped by the layer that owns it: the doors, the served set, the protocol definition, and the HTTP bridge.
+* [Capabilities](capabilities/) - The catalog: fourteen tools, the resources and prompts, and the three transports — what each answers, and what implements it.
+* [Design](design/) - The rules a change has to keep: the inherited floor, the two dependencies, kernel-first, and the single entry point.
+* [Testing](testing/) - How this gem is tested and how to add to it: what each layer proves, and the walk a new tool owes.

data/.okf/log.md

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+# Update Log
+
+## 2026-08-21
+
+* **The freshness stamp watches every file the registry reads** —
+  [the tool set](design/the-tool-set.md). okf's registry can now `link` another
+  registry file, and that file's bundles resolve into the served set; the stamp
+  still stat'd this server's own file alone, so an `okf registry set` over there
+  moved nothing it watched and a long-running server kept answering about the
+  set it booted with. That is the silent wrong answer the stamp exists to
+  prevent, arriving through a second door. The two kinds of file keep **different
+  rules**: this server's own registry going unreadable holds the last good set,
+  because a file caught mid-write must not empty what is being served, while a
+  linked target that vanishes drops its bundles — okf already reports a missing
+  one as resolving to nothing, and following that beats freezing it. Riding out
+  an error and following a state change are different jobs, and one stamp had to
+  do both.
+
+* **`list_bundles` names the linked groups too.** They were resolvable as a
+  `bundle` argument and absent from the listing, because okf split them into a
+  second method — an agent could open `@brain` and never learn it existed. The
+  kernel folded them back into `groups_listing`, so this needed no change here
+  beyond the `link` key now on each row.
+
+## 2026-08-19
+* **Addition**: **okf-mcp has a knowledge bundle, and `AGENTS.md` now relies on
+  it** — [structure](structure/), [capabilities](capabilities/),
+  [design](design/), [testing](testing/). The structural layer moved rather
+  than being copied: the file-by-file Map, the hard constraints and the testing
+  doctrine were `AGENTS.md`'s, and `AGENTS.md` now carries the contract, the
+  commands and a pointer here. A fact stated twice is a fact that drifts.
+* **Addition**: **the catalog is pinned, not trusted** —
+  [what each test layer proves](testing/layers.md). Structural documentation is
+  derived from code, so `test/unit/bundle_catalog_test.rb` fails when a `.rb`
+  under `lib/` is named by no concept, when a concept names a file that is gone,
+  or when the tool catalog and `server.rb` disagree. The Map it replaces lived
+  in `AGENTS.md` where nothing checked it, which is the failure this closes.

data/.okf/overview.md

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+---
+type: Overview
+title: okf-mcp at a glance
+description: Four layers between an MCP frame and the okf kernel — the doors, the served set, the server definition, the transports — and the one rule that decides every question about them.
+tags: [mcp, overview, architecture]
+generated:
+  by: human:maintainer
+  at: 2026-08-19T12:00:00Z
+---
+
+# The one rule
+
+**This shell restates nothing the kernel can answer** —
+[kernel-first](design/kernel-first.md), the rule that decides the rest. Every
+tool is a library call into `okf`; logic a tool needs lands in the kernel and is read from there.
+That is what keeps the CLI's answer and the MCP answer from drifting apart, and
+it is the first question to ask of any change here: *could the kernel answer
+this?* If it could, it should, and this gem calls it.
+
+The consequence is that okf-mcp is small for what it does.
+[Fourteen tools](capabilities/tools.md) over a 3,000-line `lib/`, most of which is schema, bounded-output arithmetic and the
+HTTP bridge — almost none of it analysis.
+
+# Four layers
+
+```
+  an MCP host
+      │
+      │  stdio, Streamable HTTP, or any Rack 3 server
+      ▼
+  transports      cli.rb · http.rb · app.rb
+      │
+      ▼
+  definition      server.rb · output_schemas.rb · resources.rb · prompts/
+      │           fourteen tools, two prompts, one declared shape per tool
+      ▼
+  served set      registry.rb · filters.rb · backend.rb · memory_backend.rb
+      │           which bundles exist, and the cache in front of them
+      ▼
+  the okf kernel  Bundle, Folder, Search, Validator, Linter — all the analysis
+```
+
+Read them in that order and each one only depends on the layer below it. The
+[structure](structure/) area is one concept per layer, and it names every file —
+start at [the doors](structure/doors.md).
+
+# What it is not
+
+It is not a second implementation of okf, and it is not a writer: every tool is
+a read-only lens, declared as one on the wire. It is also not a program you
+start on its own — there is no `exe/`; `okf mcp` through the kernel's plugin
+seam is the [single entry point](design/one-entry-point.md).
+
+The argument for *why* the tool set is what it is — why fourteen and not
+thirty, what `total` means, why domain failures carry the kernel's own
+sentences — is [the tool set](design/the-tool-set.md), not restated here. The
+rest of this bundle is about the code that serves it.

data/.okf/structure/doors.md

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+---
+type: Component
+title: The doors, and the load contract
+description: Three ways in — the plugin verb, the Rack app, the library require — and the lazy-loading rule that keeps a bare `require "okf/mcp"` free of protocol machinery.
+tags: [mcp, loading, cli, rack, plugin]
+generated:
+  by: human:maintainer
+  at: 2026-08-19T12:00:00Z
+resource: lib/okf/mcp.rb
+---
+
+# The files
+
+| file | what it owns |
+| ---- | ------------ |
+| `lib/okf/mcp.rb` | the light entry: requires the served-set layer, defines `OKF::MCP` and `OKF::MCP::Error`, and the lazy `OKF::MCP.app` |
+| `lib/okf/plugin.rb` | registers `okf mcp` with the kernel's command registry — the gem's only entry point, since there is no `exe/` |
+| `lib/okf/mcp/cli.rb` | `OKF::MCP::CLI` — the argv shell: flag parsing, the boot announcement, stdio or `--http`, exit codes |
+| `lib/okf/mcp/app.rb` | `OKF::MCP::App` and its `Scope` — transport construction for a Rack server, in exactly one place |
+| `lib/okf/mcp/version.rb` | `OKF::MCP::VERSION` |
+
+# The load contract
+
+`require "okf/mcp"` loads **the registry seam and the backends only**. The MCP
+SDK, WEBrick and the argv shell arrive on demand — from `okf/mcp/server`,
+`okf/mcp/http`, `okf/mcp/cli`, or the lazy `OKF::MCP.app`, which requires
+`mcp/app` inside the method rather than at the top of the file.
+
+This is not tidiness. An application that embeds okf and happens to have
+okf-mcp installed pays for neither the SDK nor WEBrick until something asks for
+the protocol, and the kernel's plugin discovery `require`s `okf/plugin.rb` for
+*every* unknown verb — so a heavy top-level require here would be a tax on
+`okf help`.
+
+`test/unit/loading_test.rb` pins it in a clean subprocess: after a bare
+require, neither `::MCP` nor `::WEBrick` is defined. Adding a top-level
+`require` to `lib/okf/mcp.rb` breaks that test, which is the intent.
+
+# One place builds a transport
+
+`App.build` and `App.transport` exist so that the `--http` path, the Rack path
+and the tests cannot each compose the server differently. `CLI#prepare_http`
+goes through the same seam. When a transport option is added, it is added
+there, once — a second construction site is how two callers come to disagree
+about `allowed_hosts`.
+
+`App::Scope` is the Rack middleware that owns the transport's lifetime: it
+answers `call`, and `close` tears the transport down. It is what makes
+`run OKF::MCP.app` in a `config.ru` a complete answer with no rackup file of
+this gem's own — the reader's server is the reader's dependency.