TheLocal

Resident Claude Code expert subagents ("locals"), contributed by the gems an app uses. Any gem or app declares the locals that know its conventions; the_local aggregates the locals of an app's installed providers into its .claude/agents/, plus a delegation rule so the app's agent actually uses them.

A "local" is a Claude Code subagent that knows one gem's conventions cold. The host's orchestrating agent delegates that gem's work to it, so usage stays consistent instead of drifting.

Installation

Add it to your Gemfile:

gem "the_local"

or install it directly with gem install the_local. To track an unreleased change, point at the repo instead:

gem "the_local", github: "DYB-Development/the_local"

The gem's core is Rails-free, but the primary documented workflow uses the bin/rails g the_local:install / the_local:provider generators, so those steps assume a Rails host. The the_local:refresh rake task and the register API work without Rails.

Usage

There are two sides.

Consuming app — install the locals of the app's direct dependencies (and the app's own) into .claude/agents/, and write the delegation trigger:

bin/rails g the_local:install

Install copies each provider's committed .md verbatim — the rendering happens in the provider gem at build time, not in the host — so every app on the same gem version gets a byte-identical local. Re-run the_local:refresh (rake) after a bundle install/update to re-sync.

Provider gem — contribute the locals an app installs. A gem registers its agents with TheLocal.register behind a soft guard, exposing the common command interface (info / install / worker), then renders them to committed .md with rake the_local:build. Scaffold it with:

bin/rails g the_local:provider <gem_name> --scope "the gem's domain"

See PROVIDERS.md for the full provider guide, including the manual steps for non-Rails gems.

Development

After checking out the repo, run bin/setup to install dependencies. Then, run rake test to run the tests. You can also run bin/console for an interactive prompt that will allow you to experiment.

To install this gem onto your local machine, run bundle exec rake install. To release a new version, update the version number in version.rb, and then run bundle exec rake release, which will create a git tag for the version, push git commits and the created tag, and push the .gem file to rubygems.org.

Contributing

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/DYB-Development/the_local.

License

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.