Building with an Agent

How to have an AI agent build a plugin, a theme or a headless site for Pano. The pattern is the same each time: start from the official scaffold, let the agent read the agent guide, ask for one thing at a time, run the checks, review by hand.

The agent guide

Pano's rules for agents are a folder named agent-guide/: a short README.md that routes by task ("making a new plugin", "restyling without touching markup", "a headless front-end"...) and one small file per task. An AGENTS.md and a CLAUDE.md at the repository root tell the agent to read that README first and then only the file for its task.

Repository	Carries the guide
PanoMC/pano-starter-sveltekit (headless starter)	yes, and client-gen new copies it into your project
PanoMC/pano-boilerplate-plugin (plugin template)	yes, plus design/ for panel pages
PanoMC/vanilla-theme (default theme)	yes
PanoMC/sdk	the source of the guide

The plugin and theme scaffold commands do not write these files into a new project. Copy them once:

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/PanoMC/pano-boilerplate-plugin /tmp/pano-boilerplate
cp -r /tmp/pano-boilerplate/agent-guide /tmp/pano-boilerplate/design my-plugin/    # a plugin
cp -r /tmp/pano-boilerplate/agent-guide my-theme/                                  # a theme

Then start your prompts with "Read agent-guide/README.md first", or put that sentence in your own AGENTS.md.

Plugin

Start as Addon Getting Started describes, with Pano running locally and Development Mode on:

cd <your-pano>/plugins && bunx @panomc/plugin-kit new my-plugin
cd my-plugin && bun run dev

Example prompts:

Read agent-guide/README.md first. Add a site page at /my-plugin/rules that shows a list of
server rules. Store the rules in the plugin's own table and add the endpoint that lists them.

Read agent-guide/README.md first. Add a panel page where an admin can add, edit and delete
the rules, protected by a permission of this plugin. Follow design/README.md.

Move every text of this plugin into src/main/resources/locales/ and add a Turkish translation.

Check the result: bun run check (or bunx pano-plugin check --strict), then ./gradlew build. Kotlin changes need ./gradlew build -Pnoui and a restart of Pano before you see them.

Theme

Start as Theme Getting Started describes:

bunx @panomc/theme-core new my-theme
cd my-theme && bun install && bun run dev:ui

Example prompts:

Read agent-guide/README.md first. Give this theme a dark look with a green accent.
Change only src/styles/tokens.scss and src/styles/style.scss; do not eject any view.

Read agent-guide/README.md first. Replace the home page with a landing page: a hero with the
server address, then the latest three posts. Keep every plugin slot.

Restyle the market plugin's product card to match this theme. Take the cheapest step that
works and tell me which one you took.

Check the result: bunx @panomc/theme-core check --strict, bun run build, and open <your Pano address>/__pano/views to see every view with sample data.

Headless front-end

Start as Headless Quick Start describes. This scaffold already contains AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md and agent-guide/:

bunx @panomc/client-gen new my-site --url http://localhost:8088
cd my-site && bun run dev

Example prompts:

Read AGENTS.md first. Add a /servers page that lists the Minecraft servers of this Pano with
their online player counts. Use the generated client in src/lib/pano; do not edit it.

Run bun run pano:pull, then add a store page built on the market plugin's operations.

Check the result: bun run check, bun test, bun run build. bun run package makes the zip you upload as "My uploaded site".

Review by hand before you release

• Run it. A green check is not a working plugin or theme. Open the page in a Pano with Development Mode on, at phone width too.
• Read the diff. Look for edits in generated folders (a theme's src/routes/, src/lib/, lang/; a plugin's src/main/resources/plugin-ui/; a headless site's src/lib/pano/), TypeScript files, and a changed svelte version. The guide forbids all of them.
• Plugins: permissions on every panel endpoint, input validation, and that the plugin writes only to its own tables. The pluginId can never change after the first release.
• Secrets: no front-end key, license key or password in the code or in the commit.
• Versions and releases: the agent should not bump a version, tag or push. Releases come from your commit messages: see Building & Publishing and Publishing.