pulse manifest

Audience: CLI users (and orchestration agents) discovering Pulse’s self-description — what commands exist, which aggregators are registered, which field types are supported, and what skills the binary ships with.

The manifest is the bare-pulse invocation with --json. It is deterministic and process-wide: it never depends on cohort data or the filesystem.

LLM agents using MCP: the manifest is also available via the pulse_manifest MCP tool. Agents typically call this once per session and cache the result.

Synopsis

pulse --json [--slim]

(There is no pulse manifest subcommand — the manifest is the root command’s --json output.)

Flags

Flag	Type	Default	Purpose
`--json`	bool	false	Emit the manifest as a JSON envelope
`--slim`	bool	false	Drop prose descriptions from the manifest payload (smaller for size-sensitive clients)

Manifest shape

From descriptor/manifest.go:

{
  "format_version": "1.0",
  "data": {
    "commands":   [ /* every CLI leaf with a usage line */ ],
    "operators":  [ /* every aggregator / attribute / filterer / grouper / window / feature */ ],
    "tests":      [ /* every tier-1 statistical test */ ],
    "post_tests": [ /* every tier-2 post-test variant */ ],
    "distributions": [ /* every synth distribution kind */ ],
    "errors":     [ /* every registered error code with a description */ ],
    "mcp_tools":  [ /* every MCP tool name + description */ ],
    "field_types":[ /* every .pulse field type */ ],
    "skills":     [ /* every embedded skill with metadata */ ]
  },
  "errors":   [],
  "warnings": []
}

Every list is sorted deterministically (alphabetical or category + alphabetical). The same Pulse binary always emits the same manifest bytes (modulo --slim).

Determinism gates

Several CI tests enforce manifest completeness — see Testing Conventions. Notably:

TestManifestOperatorsComplete — every registered operator appears in the manifest.
TestManifestTestsComplete / TestManifestPostTestsComplete — every registered statistical test appears.
TestManifestDistributionsComplete, TestManifestErrorCodesComplete, TestManifestMCPToolsComplete — same for distributions, error codes, and MCP tools.
TestManifestStreamableMatchesTypes — every operator’s streamable flag mirrors the per-type method.

When to use the manifest

Use case	Reach for
Discover what’s available	`pulse --json`
Confirm a specific operator’s params and emit type	`jq ’.data.operators[]
List embedded skills with their `applies_to`	`jq '.data.skills[]'`
Generate documentation or client stubs	Parse the full manifest once at boot
Quick “is this name a real operator?”	`pulse –json –slim

Exit codes

Code	Meaning
0	Always (the manifest is in-memory, deterministic, never errors)

Examples

Print the manifest

pulse --json | jq '.data | keys'

Slim variant for embedding in an agent’s system prompt

pulse --json --slim > manifest.slim.json

List every aggregator with its emitted type

pulse --json | jq '.data.operators[] | select(.category == "aggregation") | {name, emits_type}'

Confirm a feature operator’s parameters

pulse --json | jq '.data.operators[] | select(.name == "FEAT_BUCKETIZE")'

How LLMs Use Pulse — the manifest is one of the agent discovery primitives
Library: pulse.Manifest — Go counterpart
Internals: Architecture — why the manifest cannot import service/ or processing/

Keyboard shortcuts

Pulse Documentation