The standard Athenode plugin

The standard Athenode plugin contains 7 skills, 10 agents, 1 rules text, 1 MCP server and 5 settings files, listed here with what each one does and how updates to the standard plugin reach your project's copy.

A plugin is a named bundle of what your AI coding tools work with: skills, agents, rules, MCP servers and plugin files. The standard plugin carries Athenode's workflow. Every new project starts with its own copy of it, named "Athenode", with the slug atn, and the plugin library shows the standard plugin as its first entry, marked Standard. Plugins explains how the copy, the installed plugin and your other plugins relate.

The source of the standard plugin is public on GitHub, in the athenode-plugin repository, under the Apache-2.0 licence.

Skills in the standard plugin

A skill is a reusable set of instructions that an AI tool loads when it is relevant, usually run as a slash command such as /atn:mindmap. The way to run a skill differs by AI tool, and the supported AI tools gives the form for each.

The skills are named atn-settings, atn-mindmap and so on, and the slug of your project's copy is atn. The slug is the prefix of a plugin package's commands, and a skill whose name starts with the slug drops that start, which gives the commands in the table. The slug atn cannot be changed. A clone of the copy has a slug made from its own name, such as security-review, and keeps the names of the skills, so its mind map is /security-review:atn-mindmap.

Skill	What it does	Reference
/atn:settings	Asks how agents should test, review and use git in this project and saves the answers as the workflow settings. You run it once after the first install and again whenever the settings should change.	Settings
/atn:mindmap	Runs a mind map: your AI agent asks rounds of questions and turns your answers into a specification with the status Prepared. It starts a specification or continues an existing one.	Mind map
/atn:decompose	Breaks a specification down into one level of stages, each a sub-specification of its own, and links the stages with blockers in build order.	Decompose
/atn:apply	Implements a prepared specification or subtree: your AI agent plans, implements and reviews each leaf specification in the order the blockers allow, with tests and git handled as the workflow settings say.	Apply
/atn:todo-enqueue	Adds one ToDo card from the current session, with its type, priority and open questions.	Add a card
/atn:todo-dequeue	Works through the open ToDo cards one by one. Each card becomes a specification, is carried out directly, is skipped or is dismissed.	Card queue
/atn:manage	Lists, creates, changes and deletes plugins and their skills, agents, rules, MCP servers and files, and works with the plugin library.	Manage plugins

The Athenode workflow describes the order in which you meet the skills and what each one needs and produces.

Agents in the standard plugin

An agent is a specialist that an AI tool can hand work to (a subagent in most AI tools). The skills of the standard plugin hand work to these 10 agents, and their names appear in your AI tool while a skill runs. You do not run them yourself.

Agent	What it does	Works for
spec-placement-researcher	Finds the best parent for a specification that is about to be created, or proposes placing it at the top level of the specification tree.	/atn:mindmap
spec-feasibility-analyst	Checks a specification against your codebase for feasibility, complexity and pitfalls.	/atn:mindmap, /atn:decompose, /atn:apply
spec-dependency-researcher	Checks a specification against the rest of the specification tree for dependencies, overlaps, conflicts and candidates for blockers.	/atn:mindmap, /atn:decompose
spec-decomposer	Proposes how to break a specification into one level of stages when you choose "Decompose into stages" at the end of a mind map.	/atn:mindmap
spec-decomposition-finalizer	Rewrites each draft stage from its answered questions and fresh research, sets it to Prepared and links it to its blockers.	/atn:decompose
spec-implementation-planner	Verifies that a leaf specification is feasible and records its implementation plan, which you read in the Plan tab of the specification.	/atn:apply
spec-implementer	Writes the code for a leaf specification from its implementation plan, and applies the findings of a review.	/atn:apply
spec-implementation-reviewer	Reviews implemented leaf specifications against their specifications and your code review settings, then approves each one or reports findings.	/atn:apply
todo-implementer	Carries out a ToDo card directly in the code, with no specification and no recorded plan, and applies the findings of a review.	/atn:todo-dequeue
todo-reviewer	Reviews the code written for a card against the card, its answers and your code review settings.	/atn:todo-dequeue

spec-implementer and todo-implementer are the two agents that write code in your repository. The two researchers, the feasibility analyst and spec-decomposer read and report, and change neither your code nor your specifications.

Rules in the standard plugin

Rules are the instructions every agent in a plugin follows. The rules of the standard plugin have five sections.

Section	What it makes every agent do
MCP	Reach specifications and the plugin through the tools of the athenode MCP server, and ask you to run athenode init when those tools are missing from the session.
Settings	Load the workflow settings before working and follow each settings file's ## Custom section.
Questions	Ask you questions in one form: numbered, at most 4 per message, with the recommended option first.
ToDo cards	Attach an open question to a ToDo card only for a decision that you alone can make, and at most 3 per card.
Language	Write stored text such as specifications and settings in English and talk to you in your language.

init writes the rules into the file each selected AI tool reads, such as AGENTS.md or CLAUDE.md. Rules in a plugin covers editing them and where they are installed.

The MCP server in the standard plugin

The standard plugin has one MCP server, named athenode. It is the Athenode MCP server, through which your AI agent reads and writes specifications, ToDo cards and plugins. init configures it for every AI tool you select. The Athenode MCP server lists its tools.

Settings files in the standard plugin

The settings files are the plugin files under settings/. They hold the project's workflow settings, and the skills read them each time they run.

File	Holds
settings/SETTINGS.md	The overview of the workflow settings, including the sub-projects of the repository that have settings of their own.
settings/gitflow.md	How agents use git: branches, commits, tags and what happens at the end of an apply run.
settings/testing.md	How thoroughly agents test their changes, whether they write end-to-end tests and how many attempts they make to fix failing tests.
settings/code-review.md	When implemented work is reviewed, which checks the review runs and how many automatic fix rounds it gets.
settings/methodology.md	Whether tests or the implementation are written first.

/atn:settings fills these files from your answers. Each file has a ## Custom section for your project's own rules, which /atn:settings leaves untouched and agents follow. When you keep separate settings for sub-projects, the plugin holds one more folder of settings files per sub-project.

The settings files stay with the plugin in Athenode and are not written into your repository. Plugin files and settings covers reading and editing them.

How the parts of the standard plugin depend on each other

The skills call each other and the agents by name. /atn:mindmap can go on to /atn:decompose and /atn:apply, and each skill hands work to the agents listed for it above. Renaming or removing a built-in skill or agent in your project's copy therefore stops the skills that use it.

Every skill of the standard plugin works through the athenode MCP server, so a plugin without that server cannot run them. The skills also rely on the settings files and on the MCP, Settings, Questions and Language sections of the rules.

/atn:manage names these consequences and asks you to confirm before it removes or replaces one of these parts.

How the standard plugin fits the plan limits

Your project's copy has no limit on how many skills, agents or MCP servers you add to it.

How updates to the standard plugin reach your copy

When Athenode changes the standard plugin, it updates your project's copy part by part.

Part of your copy	What an update does
A built-in skill or agent that your project has not changed	Receives the version from the standard plugin.
A built-in skill or agent that your project changed	Keeps your version.
The rules, if your project has not changed them	Receive the version from the standard plugin.
The rules, if your project changed them	Keep your version.
A skill or agent that the standard plugin gains	Is added, unless your copy already has one of that name.
Settings files that exist	Stay as they are.
MCP servers	Stay as they are.
Skills, agents and files that you added	Stay as they are.

Updates apply to your project's copy of the standard plugin. A clone of the copy and a plugin added from the plugin library are separate plugins and are not updated this way.

An update changes the copy in your Athenode project. To bring it into a local project directory, run init there again:

athenode init

init shows the changed files in its plan before it writes them. Install a plugin describes the plan.