| title | Agent-ready docs index |
|---|---|
| summary | A `<?catalog?>` in `CLAUDE.md` keeps one `summary` line per tracked doc, so an agent reads a few thousand tokens of metadata up front and opens only the files a task touches. |
| icon | list-tree |
| link | /guides/progressive-disclosure/ |
| weight | 13 |
| group | Markdown as a single source of truth |
AI coding agents pay context tokens for every file they read. Loading a whole docs tree up front wastes most of them.
Progressive disclosure inverts that. A <?catalog?> in the
agent file keeps one summary line per tracked doc. The agent
skims the index, then opens only the files a task touches.
mdsmith check flags the index when it drifts; mdsmith fix
rebuilds it.
mdsmith's own CLAUDE.md is the live
example. Its catalog compresses the docs tree to a few thousand
tokens of metadata.
See the progressive disclosure guide for the step-by-step recipe.