The .alienmonster/ directory

.alienmonster/ is the on-disk cache of your strategy repo. It sits at the root of your code project, next to package.json or src/, and coding agents read from it when they need strategic context.

The directory is not the source of truth — your strategy lives authoritatively on the AlienMonster server. .alienmonster/ is a mirror kept in sync. See Sync model for how that works.

What init creates

Running npx alienmonster init (see CLI reference) writes:

.alienmonster/
├── .config.json     { schemaVersion, projectName, createdAt }
├── .gitkeep
└── .gitignore       ignores sessions/raw/

At this point the directory is nearly empty — your first session is what fills it.

What export writes

Running npx alienmonster export (or npx alienmonster sync when the server has new content) fetches your strategy from the AlienMonster server and writes rendered files into .alienmonster/:

• context.md — combined context agents load by default.
• strategy.md — strategy summary for human reading.
• strategy.json — machine-readable manifest of every primitive.
• decisions.md — all decisions-dimension primitives, rendered as a readable ledger.
• assumptions.md — assumption-subtype primitives from the risk dimension.
• tasks.md — tasks extracted from sessions.
• product-architecture.md — roadmap-style product architecture view.
• technical-architecture.md — technical architecture view.
• powers/target-user.md, powers/business-model.md, powers/market-position.md, powers/tech-decisions.md, powers/risk-register.md — the five curated powers. Each aggregates primitives from specific dimensions into focused context for coding agents.

The powers/ subdirectory

Five power files live at .alienmonster/powers/. These are rendered aggregations of your primitives — target-user pulls from who / what / why; risk-register pulls from risk / evidence; and so on. Agents load them on-demand via the get_relevant_powers MCP tool.

File ownership

Every file export writes is chmod 444 (read-only). This is deliberate — it prevents agents from editing the cache directly. Edits belong on the server, where they flow back to disk on the next sync.

Each file also has a banner at the top with the HLC revision and content hash that generated it. If a sync hash mismatches what was last written, alienmonster status flags it — see Sync model.

Where agent config lives (not here)

Agent config files do not live inside .alienmonster/. They live at the repo root because that is where coding agents look for them: CLAUDE.md, AGENTS.md, .cursorrules, .claude/settings.json, .cursor/rules/alienmonster.mdc. See Agent config files.

Sync state metadata

.alienmonster/.sync-state.json tracks the content hashes of every file written, so status can detect sentinel-file tampering or drift. You shouldn't edit it directly.