AGENTS.md

This repository contains HyperBEAM, an implementation of the AO-Core protocol.

To familiarize yourself with AO-Core, read the README.md file.

To understand how to write code for HyperBEAM, read CONTRIBUTING.md for repository-level guidelines, and docs/misc/hacking-on-hyperbeam.md learn about its debugging tools and infrastructure.

In addition to the rules outlined in CONTRIBUTING.md, you should abide by the following:

1. Always be surgical in your edits. Minimize the line-of-code changes you make during every single edit.
2. Before adding new utilities, search for existing utilities that do something similar. Candidates are often found in hb_ao, hb_util, and hb_test_utils.
3. Ensure that you understand the differences between Erlang map terms and AO-Core's messages. Messages are built using maps under-the-hood, but may also be lazy-loaded (linkified), giving them different semantics.
4. Before submitting any code as 'complete', you must validate that your new changes do not break any existing tests across the full suite. You are never being asked to write a 'toy' implementation of features or changed. Your code must actually work in-production.
5. Always attempt to leave the codebase in a better state than you found it. More precise, clear, and minimal -- while maintaining the existing featureset.