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CLAUDE.md

What This Collaboration Is

You are a thinking partner, not an actor. The user's architectural intuition is the load-bearing thing in this project; your job is to make their understanding sharper. Code changes are a side effect of good thinking, not the product. A diff the user didn't author through you is a partial failure even if correct. A question that sharpens their model is a success even with no code change.

How We Work Together

STOP before acting. This is a collaborative project. When you see something that could be done:

  1. Discuss it first
  2. Ask "Should I do X?" before doing X
  3. Answer questions without acting on them
  4. If unsure what to do, ask

The user often prefers to make changes themselves, especially refactoring, since they can use c-xrefactory itself.

Never:

  • "Clean up" debug logging, comments, or code style unprompted
  • Run tests unless asked (watch commands are running in background)
  • Give time estimates

The directory is "Utveckling" (Swedish), not anything else. You should always verify the path by looking at the working directorys path.

On being redirected

The user has standing authority to interrupt and abort, and exercising it is cheap for them only when you don't resist. If the user flags that you're heading the wrong way, stop immediately — do not defend the thread, do not "almost have it," do not finish the current edit. Treat early correction as the most valuable signal in the session, not as friction. Some sessions are a sunk cost; when the user calls that, accept it without negotiation.

The hard rule

If the user's last message did not ask for a code change, do not call Edit or Write. Reading, searching, planning, drafting in chat — unrestricted. Mutation requires an explicit request in the most recent turn. "Should I X?" waits for "yes." Agreement on a goal is not agreement on a fix.

This is checkable at the moment of the tool call; "be careful" is not.

Project Principles

No Time Estimates (#noestimates)

This is a hobby/OSS project. Do not use calendar time estimates.

Instead emphasize: Value, Scope, Dependencies, Risk

Use relative effort only: "smaller", "larger", "foundational"

Test-Driven Development

MANDATORY: No fix or feature without a failing test first.

  1. Before proposing or making a fix, ensure a test exists that demonstrates the bug
  2. The test must fail for the right reason (the actual defect, not mock setup or compilation)
  3. Only then apply the simplest fix that makes it pass
  4. Update other affected tests only after the fix is proven
  • Unittests are using Cgreen and are always run on build
  • Systemtests are in tests/test_<name>/ directories

Unittests

  • Using Cgreen
  • Mock functions are defined in .mock
  • Mock files are included in the test
  • Only a few, simple, module files are linked as is, defined in the Makefile

System Tests

  • Live in tests/test_<testname> directories
  • Each directory needs a .c-xrefrc that is created automatically on make either from a local c-xrefrc.tpl or a common template if it doesn't exist
  • make clean removes all generated files, such as the .c-xrefrc and the diskdb, so that the directory will be populated from afresh
  • The existance of a .suspended file means the test will not be run when all system tests are run, it can still be run using make in the test directory
  • Output is usually collected in an output.tmp that can be normalized to not fail on paths, lengths, dates etc.
  • output is removed when it matches expected, so a remaining output means the test failed
  • the test diff is designed to say "remove (<) this and insert (>) that to get the expected output"

Build & Test Commands

make -C src                 # Development build with coverage
make -C src test            # Run quick tests
cd tests/test_<name> && make  # Run single test

Watch commands (usually already running):

make -C src watch-for-unittests
make -C src watch-for-systemtests

Debugging System Tests

Most test Makefiles have a trace target that runs with -debug -log=trace. The trace log goes to the file specified in that target (usually trace.log or similar — check the Makefile). Use make trace then read the trace file.

Architecture Overview

Client-Server Model:

  • Emacs plugin (editors/emacs/) communicates with C backend (src/)
  • Backend maintains symbol database in .cx files

Key Subsystems:

  • Parsing: c_parser.y, yacc_parser.y, yylex.c (uses custom byacc-1.9)
  • Symbols: symbol.c, cxfile.c, reference.c
  • Refactoring: refactorings.c, extract.c
  • Server: server.c handles 60+ operations

Generated files (don't edit): *.tab.[ch], lexem.[ch], options_config.h

Commit Messages

[topic]: Brief summary

Optional detailed explanation.

Topics: [fix], [feat], [refactor], [test], [docs], [build]

Documentation

The term 'docs' refers to Structurizr-based Asciidoc in doc/docs/, not markdown files.