Host READMEs

Some things are true of a site rather than of one script on it: which account to use, a rate limit worth respecting, a page that answers differently when signed out, a URL shape nothing else explains.

A host README is where that goes. It is attached to a host — linkedin.com, not linkedin.com/get_post — and every script targeting that host shares it.

What it is for

Your agent reads it before it writes or debugs a script for that site, so a warning written once is not learned again by every script that follows. It is the place for:

• the login the site expects, and how a script should obtain one
• a limit that will get an account blocked if a script ignores it
• the difference between what the page shows a visitor and what it shows you
• anything a selector cannot say

Reading and writing one

Tool	What it does
read_host_readme	The notes for a host
set_host_readme	Replace them
delete_host_readme	Remove them

Writing one needs edit access to the owner’s scripts, so a project’s README is a decision for the team that owns the project. Deleting is idempotent: it succeeds even when there was nothing there.