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Developer Guide

This guide is for people working on Cinatra’s code — writing agents, building extensions, contributing to the platform, integrating with the open standards Cinatra speaks.

For end-user material, see the User Guide. For platform-administration content, see the Admin Guide. For installation and configuration, see the Hosting Guide. For the Model Context Protocol (MCP) server (external and internal), see the MCP Guide.

Foundations

Section titled “Foundations”

Objects and data

Section titled “Objects and data”

Authoring agents

Section titled “Authoring agents”

Extensions

Section titled “Extensions”
  • Extensions — the extension system end to end: the five kinds, the dual loader, register(ctx), the host context ports, and the installed-extension gate
  • Extension authoring — build an extension: the three-file manifest, declared dependencies, and the register(ctx) activation contract
  • Extension publishing — the submit → approve → promote → registry-sync flow and the @cinatra-ai/* registry
  • Extension lifecycle and distribution — the canonical manifest, lifecycle states, and distribution
  • Extension permissions — the permissions architecture for extensions
  • Extension README contract — the marketplace-ready README every extension ships, plus the CI gate that enforces it
  • Workflow extension doctrine — the four contracts a workflow extension must define before it can replace and retire a legacy surface
  • Workflow extensions as app surfaces — the typed-portlet cinatra/dashboard.json operator surface, never a bespoke route tree
  • Cinatra BPMN Profile 1.0 — the cinatra/workflow.bpmn authoring profile: supported constructs, the 12 cinatra: elements, and the BPMN→WorkflowSpec mapping

Building and extending

Section titled “Building and extending”

Artifacts

Section titled “Artifacts”

Skills

Section titled “Skills”

Connectors

Section titled “Connectors”

Open standards

Section titled “Open standards”
  • Open standards in Cinatra — agent-to-agent (A2A) protocol, Agent-User Interaction Protocol (AG-UI), agent-to-UI (A2UI) protocol, OAS — what Cinatra implements, the version pins, the endpoint matrix
  • A2UI usage in Cinatra — using A2UI for human-in-the-loop surfaces
  • Cross-instance collaboration — registry routing, external A2A surface, AgentCard discovery, and how two instances talk at the protocol level

Platform features (implementation)

Section titled “Platform features (implementation)”

Integrations

Section titled “Integrations”

Deep references

Section titled “Deep references”

Advanced, internal engineering references — contributor material, not part of the day-to-day developer flow.

Contribute

Section titled “Contribute”

Where to go next

Section titled “Where to go next”