ai-hats-cline

A Cline surface plugin for the ai-hats framework. It registers the cline CLI as a first-class ai-hats provider through the ai_hats.providers entry point, so ai-hats discovers it with zero edits to src/ai_hats/** (the T10 IoC seam, HATS-870).

Install it alongside ai-hats and cline appears next to the built-ins:

$ ai-hats list providers
  agy     →  GEMINI.md
  claude  →  (session cache)
  cline   →  (session cache)

(The right-hand column is where the role reaches the surface from. Only agy has a project-root file; claude and cline receive the composition from the per-session cache and write nothing to the root.)

Then compose any role onto cline:

$ ai-hats -p cline -r <role>          # HITL: launches an interactive cline TUI

What it owns

• ClineProvider — the ai_hats.providers.Provider adapter for cline:
  • the composed role reaches cline inline via -s "<role>" (no static CLINE.md — update_system_prompt is a no-op);
  • HITL launches the interactive TUI (cline -i); the automate path runs headless (cline --yolo --json "<prompt>");
  • --worktree is never passed (ai-hats-wt owns isolation);
  • the role's skills are materialized into the per-session cache (<cache_root>/sessions/<sid>/skills — outside the project, default ~/.cache/ai-hats/<project-key>/, HATS-1398) and delivered to cline via --config <cache> (cline scans <base>/skills) — nothing lands in the project root (clean-root invariant, HATS-1171). CLINE_DATA_DIR is pinned to the real cline home so --config keeps the machine's auth.
• ClineParser + resolve_transcript — cline's ~/.cline/data/sessions/<id>/<id>.messages.json is discovered by the provider and parsed into a real audit.md (👤/👾 turn markers) and usage.json (token metrics), so reflect gets a factual layer for cline sessions (HATS-960, HATS-1087).

Requirements

• cline v3.x on PATH, authenticated (cline auth).
• ai-hats (this plugin depends on the integrator for the Provider ABC, per ADR-0014).

Not yet here

• Runtime bash-tool hooks: cline's TS plugin sandbox needs jiti (unbundled), so ai-hats ships no plugin — guarding falls to SurfaceGuard. A native hooks.json guard (no jiti) is tracked in HATS-1083.
• cline teams/spawn, and PyPI publish.