Where to Find Automata's Guides, FAQ, and Contribution Information

Updated

Automata's documentation is organized into a small set of entry points, and the fastest route depends on what you're trying to do. Setup, agent usage, embeddings, indexing, and execution each have their own guide; the FAQ and GitHub page cover common questions and the demo; contribution guidelines and the code of conduct are linked from the main documentation page. The sections below map each task to the right place.

Documentation Map by Task

If you want to… Go to
Install Automata and configure a local environment Setup guide
Run your first agent or execute instructions Agent Guide (includes OpenAIAutomataAgentConfigBuilder and OpenAIAutomataAgent)
Generate code embeddings for the Automata interpreter codebase Creating Your Own Embeddings
Build and use SCIP indices for Automata Search Indexing tutorials
Execute advanced coding tasks with downstream tooling Execution
Look up a specific module's API Module reference pages (auto-generated)
Read common questions Frequently Asked Questions
See a demo and system schematic GitHub page

Core Feature Guides

The main page lists features "in order of complexity," which is a useful reading order if you're new:

  1. Embeddings — how to generate code embeddings for the Automata interpreter codebase.
  2. Code and Documentation Generation — the backbone of Automata's self-programming ability.
  3. Indexing — creating and using SCIP indices for Automata Search.
  4. Execution — running advanced coding tasks via downstream tooling.
  5. Automata Agent — running an agent, including trivial and non-trivial instruction execution.

If your goal is simply to get something running, start with Setup and then the Agent Guide; the embeddings and indexing material matters mainly once you want the system to search and write code against a codebase.

Embeddings, Indexing, and Module References

The embeddings guide is split into concrete steps rather than a single page: configure the pyright-scip repository, update the code embeddings, then build and embed the docs. The module documentation (covering areas such as agent, cli, code_handling, code_parsers, code_writers, config, context_providers, core, embedding, eval, github_management, llm, memory_store, navigation, retrievers, symbol, symbol_embedding, tasks, tests, and tools) is auto-generated via the run-doc-embedding pipeline. The documentation itself notes it is still a work in progress, so expect gaps in module-level pages and treat the feature guides as the more reliable reference.

FAQ, Demo, and Live Status

The FAQ is the place to check before filing an issue. For a demo and a rough schematic diagram of the system, the documentation points to the GitHub page, which also covers installation, usage, and contribution details. A "Live Status" section exists on the main page but the provided material doesn't specify what it displays, so check it directly rather than assuming.

Contributing

Before opening a pull request, read the contribution guidelines and adhere to the code of conduct, both linked from the main documentation page. These are stated as requirements, not suggestions.

Practical Notes

  • The documentation is explicitly labeled a work in progress; if a module page is thin, fall back to the feature guides or the GitHub repository.
  • Setup is the prerequisite for everything else — the agent, embeddings, and indexing guides assume a working local environment.
  • The main page does not state pricing or licensing terms for using Automata, so don't infer cost or access conditions from the documentation alone.