fix(core): reject non-root module targets instead of dropping them silently

[TimCrooker]

The bug

modulesBody(target, modules) is called with the literal "root" at all three call sites in render.ts. Scoped outputs — apps/<pkg>/AGENTS.md, apps/<pkg>/CLAUDE.md, .claude/rules/*.md — are produced by buildScopedAgents/buildScopedClaude, which read only a scope's codexIncludes/claudeIncludes. Modules never feed them.

But loadModules validates a module's targets against manifest.targets, so targets: [mobile] passes as a "known target" and is then discarded at render time. ai-context build prints success and exits 0. The module's body reaches no generated file.

Found in a consuming repo: a mobile-interaction-guidance module had sat with targets: [mobile] since it was written. Its entire body — a surface-type decision matrix, sheet/tray rules, loading-state escalation thresholds — had never reached a single agent, and every build and verify run in that repo was green the whole time.

The fix

loadModules now throws AICTX_CONFIG_INVALID on a non-root target, naming the offending target and the route to take instead. The unknown-target error is kept ahead of it so a typo still reads as a typo rather than as a scoping mistake.

[AICTX_CONFIG_INVALID] Module '055-mobile-interaction-systems.md' targets 'mobile',
but modules only compose into the root output. Move this content to a rule file and
add it to the 'mobile' scope's includes in the scope manifest.

I chose to collapse the redundancy rather than implement composition into scoped outputs. Scope includes already fully own those files, and the target-to-scope mapping composition would need does not cleanly exist: buildScopedClaude is keyed by scope rather than target, a scope may have no codexTarget at all and write to paths absent from manifest.targets, and one scope can emit the same body to several codexAgents paths. Package-scoped content has a working route already — .ai/rules/ plus scope includes.

Docs

The meta-skill documented the behavior that was never implemented. authoring-modules.md listed api → apps/api/AGENTS.md in its targets table, which is what led the consuming repo into this. Corrected there, in manifest-schema.md, and in docs/configuration.md, plus a new section on routing package-scoped content through .ai/rules/ + scopes.

Verification

• Two tests. The scoped-target test was confirmed to fail without the guard, not pass tautologically.
• Full suite green: 223 tests across core/templates/cli. pnpm -r typecheck clean.
• End-to-end against the real consuming repo with the offending module restored:

patched:          [AICTX_CONFIG_INVALID] Module '055-...' targets 'mobile', ...
published 1.3.0:  "Context outputs are up to date"     <- the silent drop

Changeset included: core minor, templates patch.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

Note

Reject modules with non-root targets instead of silently dropping them

Previously, modules whose frontmatter named a non-root target were silently ignored at render time. Now loadModules in config.ts throws a AICTX_CONFIG_INVALID error immediately, instructing authors to move package-scoped content to a rule file included by a scope instead.

• Documentation in configuration.md and authoring-modules.md is updated to reflect that root is the only legal module target.
• Behavioral Change: builds that previously succeeded while silently dropping scoped module content will now fail with an explicit error.

^{Macroscope summarized e6a9103.}

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Approvability

Verdict: Approved

This PR adds explicit validation to reject non-root module targets with a helpful error, instead of silently dropping their content. The change is small, well-tested, and improves fail-fast behavior. The author owns this codebase.

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