parley CLAUDE.md

CLAUDE.md — Parley build instructions

You are building Parley, a transport-agnostic seam MCP that carries messages, shared context, and task hand-off between humans, online chat bots, and coding agents over a pluggable messaging backend.

Read DESIGN.md in full before writing any code. It is the source of truth. This file is the operating manual: how to work, in what order, and the rules that keep an autonomous run on-rails. TASKS.md is the ordered checklist — work it top to bottom, checking items off as you complete and verify them.

---

Prime directives

1. The seam is the product. Everything hard lives behind one small interface (connect / disconnect / subscribe / post / fetchRecent / resolveIdentity). bridge-core must never import from a backend plugin. Dependencies point one way: plugins depend on core, never the reverse. If you ever feel the urge to special-case a backend inside core, stop — the seam is wrong; fix the seam, not with a branch in core.

2. Success criterion for every backend after the first: adding it touches only the new plugin package, never bridge-core. If core has to change to fit a backend, that is a design smell to surface, not silently absorb.

3. Build in the order in TASKS.md. Do not skip ahead. v0.1 (SQLite) is the seam-proving gate; nothing else starts until it works end to end against the fakechat loopback.

4. One channel gate, verify first (see below). Before implementing the live-push half, verify the current channel contract from the docs. Do not build the push path from memory or from DESIGN.md's summary of it.

---

The channel-docs verification gate (MANDATORY before any push code)

DESIGN.md describes how Claude Code Channels work, but the exact <channel> event schema, the claude/channel capability declaration, and the reply/tool-registration details must come from the live docs, not from this package's summary.

Before writing the v0.1 push half (TASKS step P-1):

• Fetch and read https://code.claude.com/docs/en/channels and https://code.claude.com/docs/en/channels-reference (or current equivalents).
• Confirm: how a server declares claude/channel; the exact shape of the <channel> event pushed into the session; how reply/react/edit-style tools are registered; how --channels loads a custom (development) channel; and the current auth requirement (claude.ai subscription, not API key).
• If the docs and DESIGN.md disagree, the docs win — note the discrepancy in your progress notes and follow the docs.
• Develop and test the push path against the fakechat loopback (--channels plugin:fakechat@claude-plugins-official, behind --dangerously-load-development-channels during the research preview) before wiring any real backend's subscribe.