Mission
Core is the cross-cutting layer — capabilities any agent on any team can call on. Documentation, prompt orchestration, workflow utilities, and meta-tools that don't belong to one discipline because they belong to all of them.
How they work together
Core agents serve as primitives. docs-writer and docs-architect produce documentation for systems built by Engineering. api-documenter generates OpenAPI specs and SDK docs. tutorial-engineer turns code into onboarding paths. reference-builder creates exhaustive technical references.
The pattern: a Core agent gets called when an output (docs, tutorial, reference, scaffold) is needed alongside something another team built. They don't initiate work — they finish it.
Best practices
- Documentation is part of done. docs-writer ships alongside the feature, not after it.
- The right doc format for the audience. tutorial-engineer writes for first-time users; reference-builder writes for users who already know what they're looking for.
- Specs before SDKs. api-documenter writes the OpenAPI spec; the SDK is generated from it.
- Architecture docs need a maintainer. docs-architect produces the long-form technical manual; someone owns keeping it current.
Do's
- Use docs-writer for user-facing guides and how-tos.
- Pull in api-documenter the moment an API stabilizes — even before public release.
- Let tutorial-engineer design onboarding sequences from existing code.
- Hand exhaustive parameter and configuration documentation to reference-builder.
Don'ts
- Don't write architecture docs as a one-off. Without an owner, they decay.
- Don't generate docs from stale code. Sync them to releases.
- Don't ask Core to do strategy or design work. They serve other teams' output.
Common tools
Read, Write, Edit, Grep, Glob, Bash — heavy file system and search work. WebFetch for pulling external API references. Task for delegating to specialist agents when documentation requires deep technical context.
When to call on Core
Documentation needs at any level (user, API, reference, tutorial), onboarding flows, or any moment where the work itself exists but the artifact that explains it doesn't.