Protocol Package Guide

Use this guide when you are developing packages/protocol.

What this module owns

packages/protocol is the pure protocol layer. It owns:

• message schema
• capability descriptors
• serialized error shape
• guards and validation helpers

Build and test

Use the package-scoped commands first:

pnpm --filter @modeldriveprotocol/protocol build
pnpm --filter @modeldriveprotocol/protocol test

Common development workflow

Start here when the change affects protocol contract rather than runtime behavior.

Typical loop:

1. update src/models.ts, src/messages.ts, src/errors.ts, or src/guards.ts
2. update focused guard or contract tests under packages/protocol/test
3. rebuild the package
4. only then update server or client code that consumes the contract

Debugging expectations

This package has no runtime process to launch. Debugging is mostly:

• reading the resulting types and message shape
• running the protocol package tests
• verifying downstream compile and unit-test impact in packages/client and packages/server

If a protocol change crosses layers, validate in this order:

pnpm --filter @modeldriveprotocol/protocol test
pnpm --filter @modeldriveprotocol/client test
pnpm --filter @modeldriveprotocol/server test
pnpm test