naetive

The folder: carry the understanding in your repo

Last reviewed: 16 Sep 2026

The understanding also lives in your repository, as a plain .naetive folder next to .git. Clone the code and the next agent inherits the understanding, even with no connection to Naetive. This page is how to get it, what is in it, and how it stays current.

Clone the code. Inherit the understanding.

Get it, once

Two ways, same result:

  • In the repository: naetive export (the installer put the command on your machine; add --project <slug> if the repo is not yet tied to a project).
  • On the Understanding page: Download .naetive and unpack it at the repo root.

The first time, the command says plainly what happens from then on. Review the folder like any change and commit it with your code.

Then it follows the understanding

Once the folder exists in a repository, it keeps itself current while an agent works there: every commit, edit or dispute of an entry refreshes the folder, and a catch-up runs when a session starts, so changes made while nobody was connected arrive too. (This needs the installed Claude Code hooks, which are not yet available on Windows; there, re-run the command.)

Git stays yours. The refresh changes files on disk; you commit them. Naetive never writes to a repository that did not ask for the folder, and a file you edited by hand is left alone and listed.

The card on the Understanding page says when the folder was last written and how many entries have landed since.

What is inside

  • project.md is where an agent starts: identity, purpose, architecture, the hazards to respect before changing anything, and where things live.
  • areas/<topic>/: one page per topic with its entries, and one file per entry with its summary, what it implies, its detail for agents and the files it cites.
  • decisions.md, constraints.md: the load-bearing rules, front loaded.
  • open-questions.md: what is genuinely unsettled, including questions an agent raised but could not answer. Treat each as a decision to make, not a fact.
  • history/: the understanding commits, so a reader can see what changed and why.
  • index.json: the machine index of every entry and the lines it cites, used to check the understanding against the code.
  • manifest.json: the stamp, described below.
  • HOW-TO-USE.md, in the download only: the few lines to add to your agent instructions. The command writes the pointer itself, so it needs no such file.

The export also writes a pointer at the repo root in AGENTS.md, and in CLAUDE.md if it exists, inside a managed block, so any agent reads project.md before changing code.

What the stamp means

The folder records which commit it was written against and whether the working tree was clean. That says where the folder was written, not that every entry is current; an entry's own freshness is its date and its re-check state.

Honest limits

A folder is a snapshot of something alive. The living understanding is on the platform, where entries are cited, re-checked and disputed; the folder is how it travels. A connected agent gets the live version; the folder is for the fresh clone, the offline machine and the agent you have not connected.