Cline (cline)

Output

AGENTS.md                            # canonical entry-point pointer body (written by sync, shared across the AGENTS.md consumers)
.cline/rules/<name>.md
.cline/agents/<name>.md
.cline/workflows/<name>.md           # one per agent, only when workflows-dir is set
.cline/skills/<name>/SKILL.md        # one folder per skill (Cline's recommended skills path)

Cline reads the cross-tool root AGENTS.md, so sync distributes the shared pointer body there (deduplicated with the other AGENTS.md consumers). Rules and agents each emit per file into their own directory under .cline/, the layout Cline's current config reference documents (.cline/{rules,skills,hooks,agents,plugins,cron}/).

The older cline-rules page still calls the pre-migration .clinerules/ the "Primary rule format". This is a live migration rather than a completed removal (target-audit 2026-08-01). Set outputs.cline.rules-dir: .clinerules to keep rules at that path; a stale managed tree there is swept on sync otherwise.

Agents always emit at .cline/agents/, independent of that override. Cline's own file format for that directory has no dedicated doc page, so this adapter writes the spec body verbatim, with no synthesized heading and no invented frontmatter.

• Rule activation: scoped rules emit conditional paths constrained to the directory, even when the source sets alwaysApply: true. For unscoped rules, alwaysApply: false enables native paths derived from the file selector; without a usable selector, the adapter reports a coverage note. See Cline conditions and scoped selector limits. The .cline/rules versus .clinerules runtime caveat above still applies.
• Skills: one folder per skill under .cline/skills/<name>/SKILL.md, the path Cline's skills docs recommend. A flat file directly under the rules directory never loads as a skill, so this is a folder, not a rule-form file. The SKILL.md frontmatter carries name + description; sibling assets next to the source SKILL.md are copied byte-for-byte.

When outputs.cline.workflows-dir is set, each agent also emits as a Markdown file at <dir>/<name>.md, invokable from chat as /<name>.md, with the italic description prefixing the body when present. Cline's doc for this feature, docs.cline.bot/features/workflows, 404s, and llms.txt lists no project-scoped replacement in the current customization/ tree (Rules, .clineignore, Hooks, Plugins, Skills; no Workflows entry, target-audit 2026-08-08, #563).

Treat this as an unconfirmed export rather than a vendor-documented surface until a current doc backs it. The native .cline/agents/<name>.md emission still happens either way.

Config keys

Import

agnostic-ai import cline reads rules from .cline/rules/, falling back to .clinerules/, and reclassifies each file by filename prefix.

It reconstructs agents from .cline/agents/<name>.md, Cline's native per-agent directory (#534). Each file copies byte-for-byte minus the provenance header. There is no agent- prefix to strip and no synthesized heading, since sync no longer writes one there. The agent-<name>.md prefix only fires when a project still carries the pre-migration .clinerules/ layout, where rules and agents shared one directory.

Skills import from all three documented project paths, in this order: .cline/skills/, .clinerules/skills/, then .claude/skills/. The first same-name skill wins. Bundled assets and executable modes survive. .clinerules/skills/ is excluded from the legacy rules walk.

Verify

1. Install the Cline extension in VS Code.
2. Check the tree: ls .cline/rules/ .cline/agents/ .cline/skills/, grep "Generated by agnostic-ai" .cline/rules/*.md for the provenance header, test -f .cline/skills/*/SKILL.md.
3. Open the project, open the Cline panel. Cline loads every .cline/rules/*.md; each appears in the rules list with no "failed to parse" warnings. Each .cline/agents/<name>.md appears wherever Cline surfaces project agent definitions, and each .cline/skills/<name>/ loads as a skill. Open a file matching a paths rule and the "Conditional rules applied: workspace:<name>.md" notification names it; open an unrelated file and it stays out.
4. If outputs.cline.workflows-dir is set, each <workflows-dir>/<name>.md is invokable as /<name>.md; the italic description previews the workflow.