toolpath-md

Render Toolpath documents as Markdown for LLM consumption.

Provenance data is only useful if you can feed it to the systems that need it. This crate renders the step DAG as readable Markdown — a narrative an LLM can reason about. Dead ends are called out explicitly ("here's what was tried and abandoned"), giving models anti-examples alongside the successful path.

Overview

Renders any Toolpath Document (Step, Path, or Graph) as a Markdown string. Steps are topologically sorted, dead ends are marked and summarized, and the output includes enough anchoring information (step IDs, artifact paths, actor strings) for an LLM to reference back into the original document.

Depends only on toolpath — no template engines, no external dependencies.

Usage

use toolpath::v1::Document;
use toolpath_md::{render, RenderOptions};

let json_str = r#"{"Step":{"step":{"id":"s1","actor":"human:alex","timestamp":"T"},"change":{}}}"#;
let doc = Document::from_json(json_str).unwrap();
let md = render(&doc, &RenderOptions::default());
assert!(md.contains("# s1"));

Pipe into an LLM for contextual assistance:

path derive git --repo . --branch main | path render md | pbcopy
# Paste into Claude/ChatGPT: "here's what I've tried, help me with the next step"

Render options

use toolpath_md::{RenderOptions, Detail};

let options = RenderOptions {
    detail: Detail::Summary,  // or Detail::Full for inline diffs
    front_matter: false,      // emit YAML front matter with metadata
};

Detail levels

Summary (default) — file paths with diffstat (+3 -1). Compact, fits in tight context windows.
Full — inline diffs as fenced code blocks. Use when the LLM needs to reason about specific line changes.

Front matter

When front_matter: true, the output starts with YAML front matter containing machine-readable metadata (document type, step count, actor list, artifact list, dead end count). Useful for LLM workflows that parse structured preambles.

API

Function	Description
`render(doc, options)`	Render any `Document` variant
`render_step(step, options)`	Render a single Step
`render_path(path, options)`	Render a Path with its step DAG
`render_graph(graph, options)`	Render a Graph with all paths

Output structure

Step

# step-001
**Actor:** `human:alex`
**Timestamp:** 2026-01-29T10:00:00Z
> Fix greeting
- `src/main.rs` (+1 -1)

Path

# Add email validation
**Base:** `github:org/repo` @ `main`
**Head:** `step-004`
**Steps:** 5 | **Artifacts:** 2 | **Dead ends:** 1

## Timeline
### step-001 — human:alex
### step-002a — agent:claude ❌ dead end
### step-002 — agent:claude
...

## Dead Ends
- **step-002a** — Regex approach (abandoned) | Parent: `step-001`

Graph

Renders a summary table of all paths, then each path as a subsection.

Part of Toolpath

This crate is part of the Toolpath workspace. See also:

toolpath — core types and query API
toolpath-dot — Graphviz DOT visualization
toolpath-git — derive from git history
toolpath-claude — derive from Claude conversations
toolpath-cli — unified CLI (cargo install toolpath-cli)
RFC — full format specification

toolpath-md 0.2.0