Codebase

Docs linting

Two markdown gates with different coverage (verified 2026-07-14): the Vale CI workflow (.github/workflows/vale.yml) explicitly lints AGENTS.md, .github/copilot-instructions.md, and .agents/skills, while markdownlint-cli2 skips dot-directories entirely - its globs never match .agents/ or .github/, even when passed explicit paths. Lint skill docs with Vale before pushing; for markdownlint, copy them to a non-dot directory alongside .markdownlint-cli2.yaml.
Vale fails CI on error-level findings only; warnings pass. Justified terms (Go interface wording, zsh feature names) get file-scoped rule overrides in .vale.ini, each with a comment.

The Go module root is src/, not the repo root - run all go commands from there.
On windows/arm64 dev machines go test -race is NOT supported. Concurrency-sensitive changes must rely on CI (amd64) for race detection.
Rendering hot-path benchmarks live in src/template/bench_test.go, src/terminal/bench_test.go, and src/prompt/bench_test.go; compare runs with benchstat.
template.Init resets the parsed-template cache - a macro benchmark that calls it per iteration measures the cold-parse path, not steady state.

Everything under src/shell/scripts/ is embedded at build time (go:embed). After editing a script, rebuild the binary before testing; oh-my-posh init <shell> --print shows the generated output and is the fastest way to inspect what a user actually sources.
Features (transient prompt, tooltips, vi mode, streaming) are emitted per shell from src/shell/<shell>.go - a script function is dead code unless the feature switch emits its activation line.

Segment Execute runs in bare goroutines with no recover (src/prompt/segments.go), and template rendering re-panics runtime errors. Any panic there kills the whole process - the user sees a completely blank prompt. So when a user reports a blank prompt: find the panic.
If the panic trigger persists (e.g. a poisoned cache entry with a TTL), every prompt crashes until the entry expires.
Segment writers gob-encode only exported fields. segments.Base.env/options are unexported and MUST survive a cache restore: overlay the restored data onto the writer initialized by MapSegmentWithWriter, never replace the writer.

Cache persistence only happens with the hidden --save-cache flag (print/stream commands); without it, stores never write on close. Redirect the location with OMP_CACHE_DIR.
Debug logs are buffered and only printed by the oh-my-posh debug command (grep for restored segment from cache / setting entry). POSH_TRACE=1 and stderr show nothing for print commands.
On Windows the cache file is a memory-mapped 50KB+5 "persistent shared string" with a 4-byte length header; a fresh file is all zeros and logs a harmless store.go:init EOF error on first read.

Streaming is enabled by the top-level "streaming": <ms> config key. That value is ALSO each segment's pending-timeout and overwrites segment-level timeout.
stream always emits the transient prompt as a \x1e-prefixed NUL record (initial + refreshed once all segments resolve); serve records are <id>\x1f<payload>\0.
Serve pitfall class: process-lifetime initializers (if X != nil return) pin first-render state in a daemon. template.Cache did exactly that (pinned PWD/Folder/Code/Jobs) - fixed with template.ResetCache() per render in startRenderCycle (flag-based rebuild; never nil the global, abandoned segment goroutines may still read it). Audit for this pattern when extending serve.
Do NOT memoize the config in serve: the per-render gob decode is load-bearing - a fresh segment graph per cycle isolates the active render from abandoned-cycle goroutines holding pointers into their own graph.
Daemon tests must vary per-request context (cwd, status) across cycles; single-context tests cannot catch one-shot-assumption state.
config.Get prefers the session gob cache over POSH_THEME.
Go guarantees exactly 2 records per wait-mode serve request even on segment panic (renderComplete) - blocking clients (Clink) rely on this.