---
title: The guide
description: The workflow prose the CLI publishes on a first call, one page per topic.
---

## 1. What the guide is

The guide: what an agent reads on its first call, before it has written anything.

Prose, in a structured field, authored here beside `COMMANDS`, which is the design (spec
D8/G6). The manifest carries it on a bare `memhtml`, `memhtml manifest`, and a piped `memhtml help`, and
`memhtml agents-doc` renders these same strings into `AGENTS.md`, so the doc and the live answer cannot
disagree. Prose kept in a separate Markdown file would be a second copy that drifts, and prose kept
only in `AGENTS.md` would be invisible to an agent that never opens the repo.

Written for an LLM agent mid-task rather than for an operator browsing: complete sentences, action
first, and every claim true of this build rather than of the design. A guide that describes an
intention is worse than no guide, because an agent acts on it.

## 2. The topics

Each topic is one block of prose, served verbatim and rendered here on its own page. The second column is the commands whose invocation the block names.

| Topic | Commands it names |
| --- | --- |
| [`first-call`](/reference/guide/first-call/) | `memhtml manifest`, `memhtml help` |
| [`write-surfaces`](/reference/guide/write-surfaces/) | `memhtml write`, `memhtml apply`, `memhtml read`, `memhtml index update`, `memhtml sleep run`, `memhtml doctor`, `memhtml serve mcp` |
| [`when-to-batch`](/reference/guide/when-to-batch/) | `memhtml write`, `memhtml apply`, `memhtml serve mcp` |
| [`conflicts`](/reference/guide/conflicts/) | `memhtml apply`, `memhtml search`, `memhtml correct` |
| [`authoring`](/reference/guide/authoring/) | `memhtml apply`, `memhtml list` |
| [`code-mode`](/reference/guide/code-mode/) | `memhtml write`, `memhtml apply`, `memhtml read`, `memhtml search`, `memhtml recall`, `memhtml neighbors`, `memhtml exec` |
| [`recall-discipline`](/reference/guide/recall-discipline/) | `memhtml read`, `memhtml search`, `memhtml recall`, `memhtml correct`, `memhtml resolve`, `memhtml reinforce` |

## 3. Provenance

A loader generates this page from `apps/cli/src/commands.ts` while the site builds, so no file in the repository holds it: `GUIDE` is what a bare `memhtml`, `memhtml help`, and `memhtml manifest` return, and what `AGENTS.md` renders. Change the registry and this page changes with it.