AmpersandBoxDesign/docs/skills

Documents

• [&] Protocol — Agent Skills — The [&] Protocol is a language-agnostic specification for capability composition in AI agents. It defines how agents declare cognitive capabilities (&memory, &reason, &time, &sp…
• Skill 01 — Writing Agent Declarations — The ampersand.json declaration is the source of truth for what an agent can do. Everything else — validation, composition, MCP/A2A generation — flows from this file. Get the dec…
• Skill 02 — Validation — Validation catches declaration errors before they reach composition or generation. A malformed ampersand.json cannot produce correct MCP or A2A output. Validate early and often.
• Skill 03 — Capability Composition — Composition is the core thesis of the [&] Protocol. Individual capabilities are useful; composed capabilities are powerful. The protocol defines two operators that make composit…
• Skill 04 — Capability Contracts — Contracts are how the protocol enforces pipeline type safety. Without contracts, composition is just syntax. With contracts, the protocol can verify at declaration time that you…
• Skill 05 — Generation — Generation is the payoff. A validated, composed ampersand.json compiles into runtime artifacts that existing protocols understand. This is how [&] complements MCP and A2A withou…
• Skill 06 — CLI Reference — The ampersand CLI is the primary interface for working with [&] Protocol declarations. It validates, composes, and generates runtime artifacts.
• Skill 07 — Integration Patterns — Abstract composition is useful for understanding the protocol. Concrete recipes are useful for building agents. This file provides five tested patterns that combine the six prim…
• Skill 08 — Provider Implementation — Capabilities are interfaces. Providers are implementations. The protocol is only as useful as the providers that satisfy its contracts. This file teaches you how to build one.
• Skill 09 — Governance and Provenance — Capabilities without governance are unconstrained. Provenance without governance has no enforcement. Governance without provenance has no audit trail. Together, they make agents…
• Skill 10 — Anti-Patterns — Each anti-pattern follows this structure: