ghidra-cli/AGENTS.md

Agent Instructions

Critical Rules

1. NEVER SKIP TESTS! If Ghidra is not installed, the tests MUST fail. require_ghidra!() panics when ghidra doctor fails.
2. DEFAULT OUTPUT FORMAT should be human and agent readable, NOT JSON. Use --json and --pretty for JSON output. Exception: when stdout is not a TTY (piped/scripted), the default auto-detects to JsonCompact for machine consumption — this is standard Unix pipe convention.

Architecture

ghidra-cli uses a direct bridge architecture:

• CLI connects directly to a Java bridge running inside Ghidra's JVM via TCP
• The bridge is a GhidraScript (GhidraCliBridge.java) started via analyzeHeadless -postScript
• Bridge binds ServerSocket(0) on localhost, writes port/PID files for discovery
• One bridge per project, identified by ~/.local/share/ghidra-cli/bridge-{md5}.port
• Import/Analyze commands auto-start the bridge if not running
• No separate Rust daemon process — the Java bridge IS the persistent server