💍 The Ring - Skills Library for AI Agents

Proven engineering practices, enforced through skills.

Ring is a comprehensive skills library and workflow system for AI agents that transforms how AI assistants approach software development. Currently implemented as a Claude Code plugin marketplace with 4 active plugins, 67 skills, and 33 agents (see .claude-plugin/marketplace.json for current versions), the skills themselves are agent-agnostic and can be used with any AI agent system. Ring provides battle-tested patterns, mandatory workflows, and systematic approaches across the entire software delivery value chain.

✨ Why Ring?

Without Ring, AI assistants often:

• Skip tests and jump straight to implementation
• Make changes without understanding root causes
• Claim tasks are complete without verification
• Forget to check for existing solutions
• Repeat known mistakes

Ring solves this by:

• Enforcing proven workflows - Test-driven development, systematic debugging, proper planning
• Providing 67 specialized skills (16 core + 33 dev-team + 14 product planning + 4 technical writing)
• 33 specialized agents - 2 planning/analysis + 24 developer/reviewer + 4 product research + 3 technical writing
• Automating skill discovery - Skills load automatically at session start
• Preventing common failures - Built-in anti-patterns and mandatory checklists

🧭 Project Identity

Ring is Lerian-first, open-source-friendly. Design decisions prioritize the Lerian engineering team's daily needs while keeping the architecture clean and reusable for external adoption. This means:

• Lerian-specific skills stay active — Internal integrations and domain-specific workflows remain in the marketplace because the team uses them
• The architecture is universal — Skills, agents, and the plugin system work with any codebase or team
• Archival is usage-driven — Skills are archived when they stop being used, not because they're "too specific"

🤖 Specialized Agents

Planning & Analysis Agents (default plugin):

• ring:review-slicer - Review slicer (groups large multi-themed PRs into thematic slices for focused parallel review)
• ring:codebase-explorer - Deep architecture analysis (deep-analysis, complements built-in Explore)
• Use ring:reviewing-code skill to orchestrate parallel review workflow

Developer Agents (dev-team plugin):

• ring:backend-go - Go backend specialist for financial systems
• ring:backend-ts - TypeScript/Node.js backend specialist (Express, NestJS, Fastify)
• ring:bff-ts - BFF & React/Next.js frontend with Clean Architecture
• ring:ui-designer - Visual design specialist
• ring:frontend - Senior Frontend Engineer (React/Next.js)
• ring:devops - DevOps and infrastructure specialist
• ring:prompt-reviewer - Agent Quality Analyst
• ring:qa - Backend QA specialist (unit, integration, load, chaos)
• ring:qa-frontend - Frontend QA specialist (accessibility, visual, E2E, performance)
• ring:sre - Observability and reliability specialist
• ring:ui-engineer - UI component specialist (design systems, accessibility)
• ring:helm - Helm chart specialist (chart structure, security, Lerian conventions)
• ring:code-reviewer - Foundation review (architecture, code quality, design patterns)
• ring:logic-reviewer - Correctness review (domain logic, requirements, edge cases)
• ring:security-reviewer - Safety review (vulnerabilities, OWASP, authentication)
• ring:test-reviewer - Test quality review (coverage, edge cases, assertions, test anti-patterns)
• ring:nil-reviewer - Nil/null safety review (traces pointer risks, missing guards, panic paths)
• ring:dead-code-reviewer - Dead code review (orphaned code detection, reachability analysis, dead dependency chains)
• ring:commons-reviewer - lib-commons package usage review (lifecycle, tenancy, http, idempotency, security, database, messaging, outbox; reinvented-wheel opportunities)
• ring:obs-reviewer - Conditional specialist for tracing, metrics, logging, runtime recovery, redaction, constants, and SafeGo implications
• ring:systemplane-reviewer - Conditional specialist for runtime config, hot-reload knobs, admin config, tenant-scoped settings, and systemplane imports
• ring:streaming-reviewer - Conditional specialist for business events, outbox, producers, broker publishing, CloudEvents, manifests, and catalogs
• ring:tenancy-reviewer - Multi-tenant usage review (lib-commons/multitenancy patterns, tenant isolation, JWT tenantId propagation)
• ring:perf-reviewer - Performance review (code hotspots, infra misconfigurations, Go/TypeScript/Python)

Standards Compliance: Refactor-capable dev-team agents produce a ## Standards Compliance output section with conditional requirement:

• Optional when invoked directly or via ring:running-dev-cycle
• MANDATORY when invoked from ring:planning-backend-refactor (triggered by **MODE: ANALYSIS ONLY** in prompt)

When mandatory, agents load Ring standards via WebFetch and produce comparison tables with:

• Current Pattern vs Expected Pattern
• Severity classification (Critical/High/Medium/Low)
• File locations and migration recommendations

See dev-team/docs/standards/*.md for standards source. Cross-references: CLAUDE.md (Standards Compliance section), dev-team/skills/planning-backend-refactor/SKILL.md

Product Research Agents (ring-pm-team plugin):

• ring:repo-researcher - Repository structure and codebase analysis
• ring:web-researcher - Industry best practices research
• ring:docs-researcher - Framework documentation research
• ring:product-designer - Product design and UX research

Technical Writing Agents (ring-tw-team plugin):

• ring:guide-writer - Functional documentation (guides, tutorials, conceptual docs)
• ring:api-writer - API reference documentation (endpoints, schemas, examples)
• ring:docs-reviewer - Documentation quality review (voice, tone, structure, completeness)

Plugin versions are managed in .claude-plugin/marketplace.json

📦 Archived Plugins

The following plugins have been archived and are not actively maintained. They remain available in .archive/ for reference:

To restore an archived plugin, move its folder from .archive/ to the root directory and register it in marketplace.json.

🖥️ Supported Platforms

Ring works across multiple AI development platforms:

Two install mechanisms:

• Native manifest — the harness installs Ring directly from this repo via its own package manager (opencode.json, Cursor plugin marketplace, Codex plugin manifest). No local build step, no manual symlink work. Best for end users and CI.
• Symlink installer (ring-install.sh) — symlinks from your local harness config dir into a cloned Ring repo. For Codex/OpenCode, the installer builds a transformed tree at .ring-build/ first (namespace + frontmatter rewrites). Best for local development with hot-reload against the source tree.

See the Native plugin install and Symlink installer sub-sections below for usage.

🚀 Quick Start

Native plugin install (per harness)

Each Ring plugin ships native manifests for Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, and OpenCode. The harness installs the plugin directly from this repo via its own package manager — no transformation step, no local installer.

ring-default is the foundation plugin — install it al