Choose Cratis AI profiles

A profile decides which Cratis guidance a repository receives. The choice that matters is what the repository builds: an application on Cratis, part of the Cratis framework itself, or documentation. Get that wrong and the agent follows rules written for a different kind of project.

Choose the profile

Repository	Profile
.NET application on Arc and Chronicle, with a React frontend	cratis/application/csharp
.NET application on Arc without Chronicle	cratis/application/arc-only
Application on the Kotlin clients	cratis/application/kotlin
Application on the TypeScript Chronicle client	cratis/application/typescript
A Cratis framework repository (library, kernel, client SDK)	cratis/engineering/<language>, for example cratis/engineering/csharp
Any repository with documentation	add cratis/documentation

cratis/application composes every application language profile. Prefer the language-specific one unless the repository really spans them.

Only a cratis/application* profile brings in the application rules: vertical slices, model-bound commands and read models, the MVVM frontend. Only a cratis/engineering* profile brings in the framework-contributor rules. The product profiles, such as cratis/arc or cratis/chronicle, select skills for that product but deliver neither rule set on their own.

The corpus’s .cratis/ai/manifest.json is the authoritative list of the profiles, languages, and harnesses cratis ai install accepts. An unknown value fails validation with the rejected value. Use the profile table above and the CLI reference to choose a supported selection.

Configure the repository

1. Run the installer. In a terminal it prompts for each choice:

   cratis ai install

2. Or pass every selection, which is required in scripts, CI, and agent terminals:

   cratis ai install \
     --harnesses claude,cursor,opencode,pi \
     --profiles cratis/application/typescript \
     --languages typescript

3. Review and commit .cratis/ai.json:

   {
     "schemaVersion": "1.0",
     "harnesses": ["claude", "cursor", "opencode", "pi"],
     "profiles": ["cratis/application/typescript"],
     "languages": ["typescript"]
   }

The CLI expands composed profiles, keeps the language-specific parts that match your languages, and installs the matching skills. Agents, prompts, and hooks are always installed. Rules are filtered by profile and by language.

Always list your languages

--languages narrows the skills a profile composes, and omitting it leaves the skills unconstrained. Rules behave differently: a rule scoped to C# or TypeScript files is installed only when that language is listed. Name every language the repository uses.

Configuration is not ownership

.cratis/ai.json records what your repository asked for. There is no version field: the corpus version is whatever the CLI read at install or update time. .cratis/ai.manifest.json records which installed files and integrations Cratis owns, with their hashes. A file you create is never claimed because it lives in a managed or harness folder.

Update or change a selection

To change products, languages, or harnesses, run install again with the new options. To pick up a newer corpus for the selection you already have, run:

cratis ai update

The update adds newly selected content, removes Cratis-owned content that is no longer selected, and reconnects the harness links. It stops before changing anything if a managed file was edited locally. Review that edit before you use cratis ai update --force.

Use a native plugin instead

A native plugin is independent of the managed path. It suits one person using one harness. The Claude Code, Codex, GitHub Copilot, and Cursor plugins deliver every Cratis skill and do not read profiles. The Pi package does:

pi install -l npm:@cratis/pi

@cratis/pi reads .cratis/ai.json when it exists and exposes the skills for those profiles and languages; without it, the package exposes all skills. Neither kind of plugin creates the shared .cratis/ai corpus, configures other harnesses, or protects local edits.