newb 0.2.0

Test your package through the eyes of a newbie agent — a fresh AI agent reads only your docs/skills and tries to use your package.

newb

Test your package through the eyes of a newbie agent.

A fresh AI agent reads only your _skills/ (or equivalent docs) and tries to use your package. If it succeeds — your docs work. If it fails — your CI tells you why.

Install

pip install newb

Use

newb verify ./src/mypkg/_skills/mypkg
newb verify ./_skills --format markdown >> README.md

newb verify spins up a clean docker container with only your skills mounted (no host ~/.claude leak), then asks a fresh Claude agent four canonical questions:

1. Identity — "What is this package for?" / "What problems does it solve?"
2. Usage — "Show a working example" / "When should I NOT use this?"
3. Boundary — author-supplied red tests in _red_tests.yaml ("Can this do ?" → must redirect, not hallucinate)

Output: JSON (for CI) or markdown (for README injection).

Requirements

• Docker on PATH (for the agent sandbox).
• ANTHROPIC_API_KEY in env (used inside the container).
• Python 3.10+.

Library API

from pathlib import Path
import newb

result = newb.self_explain(Path("./src/mypkg/_skills/mypkg"))
print(newb.render_markdown(result))

Aliases

Also available as pip install newbie-test and pip install agentic-test (same package, defensive name reservations that depend on newb).

Heritage

newb was extracted from scitex-dev where the canonical integration still lives:

scitex-dev skills self-explain <package-name>

License

AGPL-3.0-only. Same as the SciTeX ecosystem from which newb was extracted.