Set up the Chops development environment and orient a new contributor to the codebase.

Instructions

Step 1: Check prerequisites

Verify these are installed. If any are missing, tell the user what to install and stop.

1. macOS 15+ — sw_vers -productVersion (must be ≥ 15.0)
2. Xcode CLI tools — xcode-select -p (if missing: xcode-select --install)
3. Homebrew — which brew (if missing: direct them to https://brew.sh)
4. xcodegen — which xcodegen (if missing: brew install xcodegen)

Step 2: Generate Xcode project

xcodegen generate

This reads project.yml (the source of truth for all Xcode project settings) and generates Chops.xcodeproj. Re-run this anytime project.yml changes. Never edit the .xcodeproj directly.

Step 3: Build and run

xcodebuild -scheme Chops -configuration Debug build

Or open in Xcode and hit Cmd+R:

open Chops.xcodeproj

Step 4: Orient the developer

Share this architecture overview:

Entry point: Chops/App/ChopsApp.swift — sets up SwiftData ModelContainer (Skill + SkillCollection), starts Sparkle updater, injects AppState into environment.

State: Chops/App/AppState.swift — @Observable singleton holding UI state (selected tool, selected skill, search text, sidebar filter).

Models (SwiftData):

• Chops/Models/Skill.swift — a discovered skill file, uniquely identified by resolved symlink path
• Chops/Models/Collection.swift — user-created groupings of skills
• Chops/Models/ToolSource.swift — enum of supported tools with display names, icons, colors, and filesystem paths

Services:

• Chops/Services/SkillScanner.swift — probes tool directories, parses frontmatter, upserts into SwiftData. Deduplicates via resolved symlink paths.
• Chops/Services/FileWatcher.swift — FSEvents via DispatchSource, triggers re-scan on file changes
• Chops/Services/SkillParser.swift — dispatches to FrontmatterParser (.md) or MDCParser (.mdc)
• Chops/Services/SearchService.swift — in-memory full-text search

Views: Three-column NavigationSplitView (Sidebar → List → Detail). Editor wraps NSTextView for native text editing. Cmd+S save via FocusedValues.

Key design decisions:

• No sandbox — the app needs unrestricted filesystem access to read dotfiles across ~/
• Symlink dedup — same file in multiple tool dirs shows as one skill with multiple tool badges
• No test suite — validate manually by building, running, and observing

Scanned tool paths:

Copilot and Aider detect project-level skills only (no global paths).

Common tasks to be aware of

Add a new tool: Add a case to ToolSource enum in Chops/Models/ToolSource.swift. Fill in displayName, iconName, color, globalPaths. Update SkillScanner if the tool uses a non-standard file layout.

Modify parsing: Frontmatter → Chops/Utilities/FrontmatterParser.swift. Cursor .mdc → Chops/Utilities/MDCParser.swift. Dispatch logic → Chops/Services/SkillParser.swift.

Change UI: Views are in Chops/Views/ (Sidebar/, Detail/, Settings/, Shared/). Main layout is Chops/App/ContentView.swift.

Important Rules

• project.yml is the source of truth for Xcode settings — never edit .xcodeproj directly
• Sparkle (auto-updates) is the only external dependency — pulled automatically via SPM
• There is no test suite — always validate changes by building and running the app manually
• The app runs without sandbox — this is intentional and required