Rendering

Canonical memory records are authoritative. AGENTS.md, linked documents, and nested AGENTS.md files are derived artifacts with a generated ownership marker. The root document contains concise sections; content beyond configured thresholds is placed in linked documents when the target and configuration allow it.

Rendering is deterministic: eligible statuses and scopes are filtered first, then records are sorted by configured kind order and stable record fields. Root and linked-document size limits are validated before output is written. Manual files are never overwritten. --backup preserves an already generated file before replacement but does not grant permission to overwrite a manual target; adoption is the explicit workflow for converting a manual file.

preview returns derived text, build materializes artifacts in the cache mount, and export writes configured user/workspace destinations. These stages are separate so inspection cannot accidentally mutate durable output.