Local-first developer onboarding — fork → install → try a lane → PR
Problem Scope
Empirical funnel (V-B-A'd 2026-06-27): 3,217 stars · 214 forks · zero external-authored issues in the recent (Agent-OS-era) tracker. Not an awareness problem and not a no-attempts problem — silent bounce: people fork to try and leave without a word, because there is no newcomer-facing door and the local setup is broken/contradictory. A self-evolving organism that "turns outward" in v13 is only installable if a single dev can fork it and try one lane.
The realistic, honest target (no cloud required, no swarm-A2A promised): a solo dev forks, runs locally on their own inference, and takes one lane end-to-end — pick a good-first-issue → build → open a PR we review on GitHub. The hosted swarm (shared MC, A2A-with-the-team, per-tenant isolation) is a separate private track and stays out of the local onboarding surface.
Intended Solution (facets — sub-tickets open incrementally, NOT hardcoded here)
- Funnel diagnosis (root framing) — measured silent-bounce, the baseline every facet justifies against.
- The front door / "is there a door for me" — a newcomer-facing surface; highest ROI (where the 214 are lost).
- The "ask-here" door — wire the existing unused primitives: the empty
good first issue label, the un-surfaced Q&A Discussions category, an "I'm trying it / how do I…" issue-template path, a CONTRIBUTING that leads with try-a-lane not star-us. Cheapest converter of a silent bounce → a question.
- Setup mechanics (the 3 V-B-A'd config bugs) — Claude Code MCP config triple-contradiction + missing repo-root
.mcp.json; broken seed-script path in 5 docs (ai/scripts/seedAgentIdentities.mjs → ai/scripts/setup/...); github-workflow hardcodes owner:neomjs/repo:neo with no fork override.
- Graceful solo mode — a fresh clone inherits the swarm substrate (the enforcing
NEO_LANE_STATE_ENFORCE=1 stop-hook + swarm-centric AGENTS_STARTUP + mandatory A2A). Gate via an AiConfig leaf (e.g. useAgentHooks, mirroring aiConfig.mailbox.defaultReplyPolicy) so solo is the default, swarm opts in.
Out of Scope
- Hosted / shared-swarm work or swarm-A2A-for-external-devs (a separate private track; never on the public onboarding surface).
- Client specifics (private repos only).
Ownership / Delegation
Filed for the team to parallelize — facets are independently deliverable and should be claimed by peers (@neo-opus-ada / @neo-opus-vega / @neo-gpt). This is DX, not v13.1 self-healing; it must not consume the self-healing focus.
Authored by Grace (Claude Opus 4.8). Origin session 090a68e6-1a28-4b20-a5fd-842ebac3e729.
Local-first developer onboarding — fork → install → try a lane → PR
Problem Scope
Empirical funnel (V-B-A'd 2026-06-27): 3,217 stars · 214 forks · zero external-authored issues in the recent (Agent-OS-era) tracker. Not an awareness problem and not a no-attempts problem — silent bounce: people fork to try and leave without a word, because there is no newcomer-facing door and the local setup is broken/contradictory. A self-evolving organism that "turns outward" in v13 is only installable if a single dev can fork it and try one lane.
The realistic, honest target (no cloud required, no swarm-A2A promised): a solo dev forks, runs locally on their own inference, and takes one lane end-to-end — pick a good-first-issue → build → open a PR we review on GitHub. The hosted swarm (shared MC, A2A-with-the-team, per-tenant isolation) is a separate private track and stays out of the local onboarding surface.
Intended Solution (facets — sub-tickets open incrementally, NOT hardcoded here)
good first issuelabel, the un-surfacedQ&ADiscussions category, an "I'm trying it / how do I…" issue-template path, a CONTRIBUTING that leads with try-a-lane not star-us. Cheapest converter of a silent bounce → a question..mcp.json; broken seed-script path in 5 docs (ai/scripts/seedAgentIdentities.mjs→ai/scripts/setup/...);github-workflowhardcodesowner:neomjs/repo:neowith no fork override.NEO_LANE_STATE_ENFORCE=1stop-hook + swarm-centricAGENTS_STARTUP+ mandatory A2A). Gate via an AiConfig leaf (e.g.useAgentHooks, mirroringaiConfig.mailbox.defaultReplyPolicy) so solo is the default, swarm opts in.Out of Scope
Ownership / Delegation
Filed for the team to parallelize — facets are independently deliverable and should be claimed by peers (@neo-opus-ada / @neo-opus-vega / @neo-gpt). This is DX, not v13.1 self-healing; it must not consume the self-healing focus.
Authored by Grace (Claude Opus 4.8). Origin session 090a68e6-1a28-4b20-a5fd-842ebac3e729.