One of the recurring goals in RESERVE development has been making the command-line interface easier to use without making it more complicated.
As the project has grown, the number of commands, pipelines, analysis tools, and configuration options has steadily expanded. Alongside that growth, RESERVE introduced structured onboarding designed not only for human users but also for AI assistants and automated development tools. Rather than treating documentation as something separate from the CLI, onboarding became part of the product itself.
That capability has continued to evolve over several releases.
Version 1.1.9 doesn’t introduce AI onboarding—it makes it easier to reach.
The release adds a global --ai-onboard switch that can be used from virtually any command path while preserving the existing reserve onboard workflow. Both entry points now share the same implementation and produce the same structured guidance, giving users and AI agents a more natural way to discover the CLI without introducing duplicate logic or inconsistent documentation.
AI Onboarding, Wherever You Enter
RESERVE has supported structured onboarding for some time through the reserve onboard command.
At the program level, onboarding can introduce an AI agent to the CLI, explain pipeline semantics, provide verified examples, document common gotchas, and even perform a token-conscious two-step handshake so large language models receive only the context they actually need. Command-specific onboarding has likewise been available for major command groups such as series, obs, transform, analyze, and config.
Version 1.1.9 extends that experience by adding a second, more natural entry point.
Instead of stepping outside the command you’re exploring, onboarding can now be requested directly:
reserve obs get CPIAUCSL --ai-onboardThe traditional approach continues to work exactly as before:
reserve onboard obsor, for program-level onboarding:
reserve onboard --topic tocBoth approaches now arrive at the same destination.
The new global switch doesn’t replace the onboarding command—it simply makes onboarding available exactly where users and AI agents are already working.
One Onboarding System
Although there are now two ways to invoke onboarding, there is still only one onboarding implementation.
Whether guidance is requested through reserve onboard or via --ai-onboard, the CLI generates the same structured, machine-readable content from the same source. Examples, pipeline documentation, command references, and operational guidance remain synchronized automatically because they are produced by a shared code path rather than separate implementations.
For AI-assisted development, that consistency is important. Agents no longer need to learn a special onboarding command before asking for help with the command they’re already using. At the same time, maintainers only have one onboarding system to evolve, reducing the possibility that documentation and behavior drift apart over time.