Coding Pal

Version-controlled persistent context primitives (instructions, skills, agents, prompts) to standardize and improve AI coding assistants across engineering teams.

Documentation website: https://alten-group.github.io/coding-pal/

Coding Pal codifies organizational engineering standards, specialist personas, procedural workflows, and interactive slash commands into machine-readable Markdown files. It eliminates hallucinated conventions, prompt drift, token waste, and unbounded agent behaviors across GitHub Copilot, Claude Code, and Cursor.

Persistent context is organized into four core primitives:

Primitive	Purpose	Catalog Reference
📋 Instructions	Normative engineering standards applied when matching files open (applyTo glob).	Browse Instructions
🤖 Agents	Named specialists with strict boundaries and falsifiable completion criteria.	Browse Agents
⚡ Skills	Procedural bundles with contracts, automated CI validators, and scaffolding templates.	Browse Skills
💬 Prompts	Interactive slash commands parameterized from active IDE selections and files.	Browse Prompts

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Quickstart with APM

Coding Pal packages and distributes primitives to multiple AI coding environments using Agent Package Manager (APM).

1. Declare Dependencies in apm.yml

Create an apm.yml in your consumer project root and select the primitives you need:

# apm.yml — consumer project configuration
name: my-service
version: 1.0.0
targets:
  - copilot   # and/or: claude, cursor
dependencies:
  apm:
    # Virtual Path Dependencies (Agents, Prompts, Instructions)
    - ALTEN-group/coding-pal/instructions/sharp-agent.instructions.md
    - ALTEN-group/coding-pal/instructions/node-express.instructions.md
    - ALTEN-group/coding-pal/agents/unit-test.agent.md
    - ALTEN-group/coding-pal/prompts/node-unit-tests.prompt.md

    # Companion Skill Bundles (Templates & Validators)
    - git: ALTEN-group/coding-pal
      skills:
        - node-express-examples

👉 For the complete reference manifest listing every available agent, prompt, instruction, and skill, see the Full APM Configuration Reference on the documentation website.

2. Install for Your Target Harness

# GitHub Copilot
apm install --target copilot

# Claude Code or Cursor
apm install --target claude
apm install --target cursor

# Multi-harness deployment
apm install --target copilot,claude,cursor

APM compiles and translates each primitive into the target harness's native configuration format:

• Copilot: .github/instructions/, .github/agents/, .github/prompts/, .agents/skills/
• Claude Code: .claude/rules/, .claude/agents/, .claude/commands/, .claude/skills/
• Cursor: .cursor/rules/*.mdc, .cursor/agents/, .cursor/commands/, .agents/skills/

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Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md for:

• Golden standards for choosing between instructions, agents, skills, and prompts.
• Authoring checklists and validation scripts.
• Local VitePress documentation server quickstart (./scripts/start-dev.sh).