# Jai Developer Agent Guidelines

These guidelines apply to any agent working with the Jai programming language.

## 1. Syntax & Core Idioms
- **Declarations**: Use `:=` for type inference, `: Type =` for explicit types, and `::` for compile-time constants (functions, structs, constants).
- **Procedures**: Declare procedures as `name :: (params) -> return_type { ... }`. Use `#expand` for macros that compile into the caller's scope and access caller variables using backticks (e.g., `` `x ``).
- **Memory Management**: Jai does not have RAII or garbage collection. Memory is managed manually, typically using `defer` to clean up resources right after allocation:
  ```jai
  data := alloc(size);
  defer free(data);
  ```
- **Context Allocators**: Jai uses an implicit `context` parameter containing the current allocator (`context.allocator`).
  - Use `context.allocator = temp_allocator;` for temporary/arena allocations that don't need manual freeing (cleared at the end of the frame/loop iteration via `reset_temporary_storage()`).
  - When writing reusable libraries or procedures, accept an optional allocator parameter or use `context.allocator` by default.

## 2. Standard Libraries & Imports
- **Anonymous Imports**: Use `#import "Basic";` anonymously to bring standard utilities like `print`, `alloc`, `free`, `tprint` directly into the scope.
- **Named Imports**: Use named imports `String :: #import "String";` to namespace helper libraries, which keeps the scope clean. Note that operator overloads do not automatically propagate through namespaces.
- **No Package Manager**: Since Jai does not have a package manager, vendor any external libraries directly into the project's `modules/` folder or implement them yourself.

## 3. Platform Bindings & Win32 API
- **Windows Bindings**: The standard `Windows` module (`#import "Windows";`) provides native bindings to Win32 APIs.
- **Wide Strings**: Many Windows APIs require wide UTF-16 strings (e.g., `LPCWSTR`). Use helper utilities to convert Jai UTF-8 strings (`string`) to UTF-16 wide strings when calling Windows APIs (e.g. using `utf8_to_wide` or similar functions in the runtime or writing a custom converter using `MultiByteToWideChar`).
- **Callback Conventions**: When defining callbacks for Win32 API (such as Window Procedures or Thread Procedures), you must mark the procedure with `#c_call` calling convention and usually `#no_context` to prevent context mismatches when called from OS threads:
  ```jai
  window_proc :: (hwnd: HWND, msg: u32, wparam: WPARAM, lparam: LPARAM) -> LRESULT #c_call {
      // If context is needed inside the callback, re-push it:
      ctx: Context; // or get from global/user data
      push_context ctx {
          // Jai code here
      }
  }
  ```

## 4. Code Quality & Compilation
- **No Compiler Warnings**: Always ensure the code compiles without warnings or errors.
- **Compile-Time Execution**: Utilize `#run` blocks to execute code at compile-time for code generation, building lookups, or validating configurations.
- **Linting & Safety**: Avoid using uninitialized variables unless performance-critical (explicitly mark as `---` if needed).
