What kit gives you | Agent Lifecycle Kit

What Agent Lifecycle Kit installs: thin AGENTS.md handshake, skills, SOPs, one MCP profile per session, kit check, and the EDD harness.

Eval-Driven Development is how you prove tool calls. The rest of kit exists so that work does not inflate the prompt, mix MCP servers, or skip a gate.

Independent assessment (value + model-/host-agnosticism) and open follow-ups: kit-value-and-model-agnostic-review.md, kit-review-backlog.md.

Always-on context

Agents pay for every byte in the bootstrap. Kit keeps **always-on** files small and loads philosophy, SOPs, and skill bodies **on demand**.

| Surface | In the always-on total? | Target | |---------|-------------------------|--------| | AGENTS.md + project handshake + thin IDE rules (.cursorrules, CLAUDE.md) | Yes | **< ~8KB** (~2k tokens) | | Skill descriptions (frontmatter only) | No (discovery) | Fine; do not pre-load skill bodies | | CODING_PHILOSOPHY.md and SOP files | No | Zero on typo/debug routes unless that procedure is needed |

kit measure-context

Prints a character/token estimate per file and **FAIL** if always-on exceeds 8KB. Re-run after editing AGENTS.md or the handshake template. kit check runs this gate last.

Agent checklist: SOPs/context-budget.md.

flowchart LR
  alwaysOn[AGENTS.md + handshake + thin IDE rules]
  onDemand[Philosophy, SOPs, skill bodies]
  mcp[One MCP profile]
  alwaysOn --> session[Agent session]
  onDemand -.->|kit-knowledge or file read| session
  mcp --> session

One MCP profile per session

Extra MCP tools compete for attention and inflate tool-schema tokens. Compose **one** named profile:

kit mcp default --install
kit mcp collab --install
kit mcp ops --install
kit mcp cloudflare-ops --install

Match the profile to the skill’s mcp: frontmatter. Do not merge collab + devtools + ops into one global mcp.json. Catalog: mcps/README.md. Procedure: SOPs/mcp-library.md.

Quality gate

kit check is the local merge bar:

1. kit audit: prompt injection, secrets, entropy, lockfile pins 2. kit validate / kit verify: eval schemas and skills layout 3. IDE rules match AGENTS.md 4. Skill-trigger evals and EDD kit eval ci (scripted, 95% routing) 5. Context budget

kit check
kit audit
kit sync --install

kit sync installs upstream skills (Cloudflare, Vercel) from skills/external.lock.json by **version tag** or latest, not a guessed commit SHA. SOPs/external-skills.md.

Commands

| Command | What it measures or installs | |---------|------------------------------| | kit measure-context | Always-on bootstrap size vs 8KB | | kit check | Audit, evals, EDD CI, context budget | | kit mcp <profile> | One MCP profile into mcp.json | | kit audit | Skills and scripts supply-chain scan | | kit eval ci | Routing accuracy gate (EDD) | | kit sync | Upstream skills from the lockfile |

EDD loop, keys, and CI: edd.md.