Writing Recipes

Writing recipes

Style guide for the recipe pages in docs/recipes/. Read this before writing or revising any recipe.

What recipes are for

Recipes turn daft's idea — lifecycle automation per worktree — into copy-paste-able setups for real projects. The reader's mental model is: "I have a project that looks like X; I'm hitting pain Y; show me the daft.yml that fixes it." Every recipe is judged against that test.

Page shapes

Pattern (atomic problem, one solution)

## Starting state
## What changes
## Recipe
## Variants
## Idempotency & safety
## Where to next

Walkthrough (project shape, several patterns threaded)

## Starting state
## Patterns we'll thread
## Step N: <pattern N applied>
...
## Final daft.yml
## What you got
## Where to next

Reference (per-tool tables, anti-patterns)

sharing-caches.md and the anti-patterns/*.md pages have their own shapes. The pattern shape doesn't apply — don't try to force it.

The starting-state vignette

Open every pattern and walkthrough with a concrete vignette. Three required properties:

1. A specific filesystem. File names, structure. Not "a Python project" — "you have pyproject.toml + uv.lock + a bin/setup.sh."
2. A specific ritual. What devs currently do. The README's literal setup steps. The git-pull-then-X muscle memory.
3. A specific pain that's already happened. Real failure modes, real symptoms. "Bugs that 'only repro on Alex's machine' turn out to be Node 20 vs 18."

The vignette is the bridge from "what's in front of the reader right now" to "the recipe." Without it, the reader has to reverse-engineer motivation from the variants list. With it, "yes this is mine" or "no, mine is different — read pattern X" is the first thing they can decide.

What does NOT belong in the vignette

The test: if changing the value doesn't change the recipe, drop the detail.

What stays: the failure modes, the ritual shape, and the recurrence without the cadence ("sooner or later," "each rotation"). Those are load-bearing.

The "reach for daft" sentence

End the vignette with one sentence that bridges to "What changes." Something like:

The reach for daft: stop relying on muscle memory. Tool versions should activate on cd, not when you remember to run a command.

It names what the user is reaching for and frames the recipe as the answer. One sentence; resist the urge to summarize the whole recipe here.

Show files; don't describe them

When the recipe references a project file (.envrc, mise.toml, daft.yml, compose.yaml, a setup script), show its content as a code block, not a verbal description. Verbal descriptions of structured content are hard to follow — the reader has to mentally reconstruct the file from prose.

Wrong:

The repo has a .envrc at the root with dotenv_if_exists .env and PATH_add bin, plus a mise.toml pinning Node 22, Python 3.13, Rust 1.84.

Right:

The repo has these files at the root:

# .envrc
dotenv_if_exists .env
PATH_add bin

# mise.toml
[tools]
node = "22"
python = "3.13"
rust = "1.84"

Place the code block(s) after a sentence or two of intro so the reader has a frame before they hit the content. Don't lead with the block (no context), and don't narrate it line-by-line afterward (the reader can read it). One short labeled block per file beats one big describe-the-whole-thing paragraph.

This applies to:

• Starting-state file listings (after the tree diagram or one-line intro)
• Walkthrough step diffs — show the file's new state, don't describe it
• Recipe outputs — daft.yml itself, not "the daft.yml gains a job that…"

The exception: trees showing layout (which directories exist) stay as trees. Trees describe shape; code blocks describe content. Use both, with the tree first.

The Recipe section is self-contained

The reader should be able to copy the Recipe section's daft.yml plus its supporting files and have a working setup. No forward references. Every env var, every command, every supporting file shown in the section is defined within it. A reader who stops reading after Recipe should still get a working hook.

If the minimal recipe needs port allocation, fold port allocation into the Recipe block. Don't put it in a "Allocating ports" subsection between Recipe and Variants.

Variants are single-axis

State the axis up front: "By language." / "By runtime." / "By source." / "By resource type." Within a single recipe, all variants must be siblings on that one axis.

Wrong: mixing source (vault, sops), scope (per-job env), and derivation (branch-port hash) under the same Variants heading. They aren't siblings.

Right: variants strictly by one axis (e.g., source). Derived values (branch-port hash) live in their own subsection at the same level as Variants.

Things that aren't variants but feel like they want to be:

• Comparisons ("X is the precursor to Y") — drop, or rewrite as actual usage guidance.
• Structural notes ("this hook can run in parallel by default") — move to Idempotency & safety.
• Cross-cutting concerns (sccache, layer caching) — give them their own named subsection.

Walkthroughs cite patterns; they don't re-derive them

A walkthrough is a vignette-with-detail showing several patterns threaded into one project. Each step says: "Apply [pattern X]. The project-specific twist here is …"

Walkthroughs do not re-explain --frozen-lockfile, cargo fetch --locked, COMPOSE_PROJECT_NAME, or any other pattern internals. The pattern owns the why. The walkthrough owns the application.

If you find yourself re-explaining a pattern's mechanics in a walkthrough, the explanation belongs in the pattern.

Cross-link density

Replace the old Composes well with + See also + Anti-patterns trio with a single Where to next of ≤3 prioritized links. Order:

1. The most common next pattern this composes with
2. The matching reference / anti-pattern page (if any)
3. The relevant Hooks pillar reference

Average outbound link count per page: aim for ≤6 total (Where-to-next plus inline references in prose). 10+ becomes furniture; the reader stops choosing.

Anti-pattern handling

• Inline :::warning blocks for in-context gotchas — they sit next to the code that motivates them. Example: "Don't run codegen in a warmup."
• Single inline link to the anti-pattern reference page for major ones (shared mutable state, secrets in version-controlled hooks).
• No bottom Anti-patterns bullet list. It duplicates the inline warnings and pads cross-link density.

VitePress directive format — get this right

Two interacting rules:

1. The closing ::: must be on its own line. Otherwise the directive doesn't terminate, and the next ## Heading gets swallowed into the warning/tip box.
2. Prettier (proseWrap: always) joins consecutive non-blank lines into one paragraph — so without blank-line separators, prettier will rejoin the title with the first content line and pull the closing ::: back onto the last content line. The fix is blank lines around the content block. Prettier respects them; the renderer respects them.

The format that survives both VitePress and prettier:

::: warning Title on its own line

Content paragraph. Multiple paragraphs are fine; just keep them inside
the block.

:::

Wrong (will be silently broken by prettier):

::: warning Title bleeds into the first line of content
Content paragraph. ←── prettier joins this with the closing
:::

If you ever see "step N is missing from the TOC" or "the next section is rendered inside a warning box," check the previous ::: block first — prettier almost certainly rejoined a closing onto a content line.

Style

• Second person, active voice. "You have," "you're typing," "your README."
• One concrete example beats two abstractions.
• YAML examples must be valid against the current daft schema. When in doubt, check docs/hooks/yaml-reference.md.
• No emojis. No exclamation points.
• Tables are good for "command vs idempotent" or "tool vs share-or-not" comparisons. Don't tablify everything.
• Past tense works for the vignette's pain stories without specific timing: "A working .env once got DM'd to a contractor." The "once" carries recurrence without claiming a date.

Verification checklist (per page)

Before committing a recipe rewrite or new page, walk this list:

• Vignette satisfies the three properties (filesystem / ritual / pain)
• Vignette has no team-size, repo-age, dep-count, or specific-timing details
• Files are shown as code blocks, not described in prose
• Recipe section is self-contained (no forward references to subsections that complete it)
• Variants share a single named axis
• Anti-patterns are inline :::warning blocks with blank-line separators around the content (not a bottom bullet list)
• Where to next is ≤3 prioritized links
• Total outbound link count ≤6 across the whole page
• cd docs && bunx vitepress build passes (strict link checking, ignoreDeadLinks: false)
• mise run docs:site:check passes (biome on the config + theme)

Reference recipes

When in doubt, mirror the structure of these:

• Pattern (simplest): docs/recipes/toolchain-bootstrap.md
• Pattern with composed teardown: docs/recipes/services-with-ports.md
• Pattern with declarative-vs-imperative split: docs/recipes/declarative-envs.md
• Walkthrough threading 2 patterns: docs/recipes/walkthroughs/rust-binary.md
• Walkthrough threading 4 patterns: docs/recipes/walkthroughs/node-monorepo-services.md

Process

• One commit per page.
• Conventional Commits: docs(recipes): <imperative> — rewrite <slug> with <reason> is a fine title shape.
• Each commit ends with a passing build + biome (the pre-commit hook runs prettier; the pre-push hook runs the build).
• Bundle related changes (e.g., a narrative refresh of all 7 patterns) into one branch, but keep per-page commits inside the branch.