Code with your own project rules

Gaunt Sloth reads a guidelines prompt segment into every run — code included — so your project’s coding conventions become part of the agent’s system prompt automatically, without you restating them on each gth code. The default-named file is picked up with no config at all.

The main use case: make gth code follow your conventions on every run

Goal: your project has coding rules (naming, error handling, what to never touch) and you want gth code to honour them without pasting them into the prompt each time.

Put the rules in a file named .gsloth.guidelines.md at your project root:

# Project coding guidelines

- TypeScript strict mode: never introduce `any`; prefer `unknown` + narrowing.
- All new HTTP handlers validate their input with the shared `zod` schemas in `src/schemas/`.
- Throw `AppError` (from `src/errors.ts`) for expected failures — never a bare `Error`.
- Do not edit files under `src/generated/`; they are produced by `npm run codegen`.
- Every new endpoint gets a Vitest test alongside it (`*.test.ts`).

Then start a coding session as usual:

gth code "add a DELETE /users/:id endpoint"

The agent now works with those rules already in context — it will reach for zod validation, throw AppError, and leave src/generated/ alone, without you mentioning any of it. Because .gsloth.guidelines.md is the default-named guidelines file, no config entry or flag is needed: Gaunt Sloth reads it from the config dir (.gsloth/.gsloth-settings/) or the project root on every command.

Reuse an existing conventions file

If your rules already live somewhere — an AGENTS.md at the repo root, say — point the guidelines segment at it instead of duplicating them into .gsloth.guidelines.md. In .gsloth.config.json:

{
  "prompts": {
    "guidelines": "AGENTS.md"
  }
}

The string is shorthand for { "path": "AGENTS.md" } and replaces the default guidelines with that file. To keep both — your .gsloth.guidelines.md and an appended AGENTS.md — use the object form with "mode": "append".

Examples

# Rules in the default file, no config — just run code
gth code "refactor the auth middleware to use AppError"

# Rules sourced from an existing AGENTS.md via .gsloth.config.json prompts.guidelines
gth code "add pagination to the /orders list endpoint"

Related

• Every prompt segment, the { path, enabled, mode } object form, and how files resolve: Prompt files.
• All code flags and behaviour: Commands.