Start
Pick a reading path that matches your role. Each path moves you from the platform model into the part of Nimi you actually need.
For specific personas (newcomer evaluator, world creator, mod developer, app developer, AI agent integrator, Nimi Coding adopter, auditor / reviewer), see Personas.
For installable surfaces and where each one lives, see Installation And Availability.
If You Are New To Nimi
Read in this order:
- Platform for the product model, the world idea, and the six protocol primitives.
- Runtime for how AI work is executed.
- SDK for the app-facing access boundary.
- Desktop for the native shell, and Web Mode for how Web differs.
- Realm for semantic truth, world state, and world history.
That order builds the mental model from "what kind of system this is" into "how AI work gets done" and then into "how apps see it." When a term is unfamiliar, Glossary collects the cross-domain vocabulary every section uses.
If You Are Evaluating The Project
For an evaluation pass:
- Platform Vision — the north-star framing.
- Platform Architecture — the cross-layer map.
- Runtime Overview and Runtime Workflows — what the AI substrate is responsible for.
- SDK Overview and SDK Boundaries — the integration discipline expected of apps.
- Nimi Coding Whitepaper — how AI-assisted engineering is governed in this repository.
This path takes about as long as reading a long blog post and gives a faithful picture of what the public surface contains today.
If You Are Building Against Nimi
Start with SDK and Runtime. The SDK is the public access surface for applications. Runtime and Realm private boundaries should not be crossed directly from apps; the SDK exists exactly so that apps do not have to.
For native shell behavior, read Desktop. For Web behavior, read Web Mode. Web is a constrained projection and does not inherit Desktop-native capabilities by implication.
If You Are Adopting Nimi Coding
Nimi Coding is admitted as a host-agnostic methodology and a publishable npm package. Read in this order:
- Nimi Coding Overview — the paradigm and the package.
- Topic Workflow — the topic / wave / packet / preflight / audit / closeout lifecycle.
- Installation — package install and adoption path.
- First Topic Bootstrap — a tutorial that walks the first topic end-to-end.
Reader Scenario: An App Author Walks Through The Docs
Suppose you are an app author who just heard about Nimi. A useful first walkthrough:
- Read Platform to find that worlds, not chat sessions, are the central object.
- Read Runtime to find that providers, workflows, streaming, and multimodal artifacts follow Runtime contracts, not app code.
- Read SDK to find that your app should consume those contracts through
sdk/runtime,sdk/world,sdk/realm,sdk/ai-provider,sdk/scope, andsdk/mod, not by importing private internals. - Read Desktop and Web Mode to learn why Desktop and Web do not have the same capability envelope and what that means for your distribution plans.
- Read Nimi Coding once you start contributing, because that is the workflow other contributors expect for high-risk or cross-surface changes.
After that walkthrough, Spec Map tells you where to read the underlying contracts when public prose is not precise enough.