Make the repository agent-friendly: AGENTS.md guides, llms.txt, skills discovery

[Anerudhan]

Before submitting

• I agree to license this contribution under the terms of LICENSE.txt.
• I ran pre-commit run and committed any formatting changes.

Affected area

Documentation or samples

Summary

Make the repository agent-friendly (for coding agents like Claude Code, Codex, Cursor — and equally useful to new human contributors):

• AGENTS.md (root): repo map, environment requirements, verified build/test/format commands, conventions, runtime debug env vars, links (published docs at docs.nvidia.com).
• Scoped guides: include/cudnn_frontend/AGENTS.md (header-only rules, graph layering, generated/ + experimental/), python/cudnn/AGENTS.md (APIBase contract, lazy-import rules, new-API checklist), test/AGENTS.md (conftest landmines, L0–L4 markers, layout), samples/AGENTS.md.
• .claude/skills → ../skills symlink so Claude Code auto-discovers the existing cutedsl-kernel-integration skill (degrades to a harmless text file on Windows checkouts without symlink support).
• llms.txt: curated docs index for retrieval-style agents (llms.txt convention).
• CONTRIBUTING.md: added development-environment, test-running, and formatting sections; documented develop as the PR base branch.

Why

Agents (and new contributors) currently have to reverse-engineer setup.py/CMake for build commands, and critical test-suite constraints (TransformerEngine import order, PYTORCH_CUDA_ALLOC_CONF timing, L0 marker default) live only as comments in conftest.py. This surfaces them in the standard discovery locations.

Related issues

None.

API and compatibility impact

None — documentation and a symlink only. No code changes.

Testing

Every documented command was executed on an SM100-class GPU machine (CUDA 13.2, system cuDNN 9.8, Python 3.10) before being written down:

• cmake -B build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release + cmake --build build -j — success, produces build/bin/{samples,legacy_samples,tests}
• ./build/bin/tests --list-tests, ./build/bin/tests "Validate conv node" — passed
• pip install -e . and pip install -e ".[cutedsl]" — success; import cudnn reports FE 1.27.0 / backend 90800
• cd test/python && pytest test_conv_fprop.py — 2 passed (L0 default)
• pytest fe_api/gemm/test_gemm_swiglu.py — runs end to end (500 passed, 460 skipped; 64 pre-existing numerical failures on this machine, unrelated to this docs-only change)
• pre-commit run — clean on the changed files

Notes for reviewers:

• pre-commit run --all-files currently reformats several pre-existing files on develop (e.g. thirdparty/nlohmann/json.hpp via clang-format, a few notebooks and .py files via black). Those reformats were deliberately excluded; the guides therefore recommend running pre-commit on changed files only.
• CONTRIBUTING previously said "one main branch" — it now names develop as the PR base (matching this repo's current branch setup). Please confirm the wording matches intended policy.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

Summary by CodeRabbit

• Documentation
  • Added comprehensive repository, development, testing, contribution, and coding guidance.
  • Added component-specific guides for the C++ frontend, Python package, samples, and test suites.
  • Added llms.txt, a curated index of documentation, references, guides, examples, and resources.
• Chores
  • Linked the skills directory to its shared location.

[coderabbitai]

Caution

Review failed

The pull request is closed.

ℹ️ Recent review info

⚙️ Run configuration

Configuration used: Path: .coderabbit.yaml

Review profile: CHILL

Plan: Enterprise

Run ID: 046d24aa-3c94-45a9-8dab-8078c413aae4

📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between 31bddc5 and 41afe29.

📒 Files selected for processing (8)

• .claude/skills
• AGENTS.md
• CONTRIBUTING.md
• include/cudnn_frontend/AGENTS.md
• llms.txt
• python/cudnn/AGENTS.md
• samples/AGENTS.md
• test/AGENTS.md

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📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

This change adds repository-wide and component-specific agent guides, expands contribution and development documentation, introduces a curated llms.txt resource index, and links .claude/skills to the shared skills directory.

Changes

Repository Guidance

Layer / File(s)	Summary
Contributor workflow guidance AGENTS.md, CONTRIBUTING.md	Documents environment setup, build and test commands, formatting, contribution steps, and the develop/main branch workflow.
Component agent guides include/cudnn_frontend/AGENTS.md, python/cudnn/AGENTS.md, samples/AGENTS.md, test/AGENTS.md	Adds component-specific architecture, implementation, execution, testing, and maintenance guidance.
Resource navigation and skills wiring llms.txt, .claude/skills	Adds categorized documentation links and points the Claude skills path to ../skills.

Estimated code review effort: 2 (Simple) | ~10 minutes

✨ Finishing Touches

🧪 Generate unit tests (beta)

• Create PR with unit tests

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