Developing tiles locally

Develop and test tiles locally

When creating tiles, you'll often want to test them locally before publishing to the Tessl Registry. Tessl lets you install tiles directly from your filesystem, making it easy to iterate on your tile content and validate it works correctly with your agent.

Why develop locally

• Test before publishing - Validate your tile works correctly before sharing it

• Iterate quickly - Make changes and test them immediately without publishing

• Create repository-specific tiles - Build context that's specific to one codebase

• Work with monorepos - Create tiles for different parts of your monorepo that stay with the code

Development workflow

1. Create your tile

Create a new tile with a skill

tessl skill new --name my-skill --path ./my-tile/skills/my-skill

or a generic tile structure:

tessl tile new --name myworkspace/my-tile --path ./my-tile

2. Install locally

Install your tile from the filesystem:

tessl install file:./my-tile

The tile is now available to your agent.

3. Test and validate

Test with your agent:

• Skills: Invoke the skill - confirm it executes correctly and produces expected results

• Docs: Query the documentation via MCP - verify information is accurate and accessible

• Rules: Ask agent to generate code - check it follows your guidance

Then validate the tile structure:

tessl tile lint ./my-tile
tessl tile pack --output ./dist ./my-tile

4. Iterate

Edit content → reinstall → test → repeat.

Tile structure

Tiles can contain three types of content:

my-tile/
├── tile.json
├── docs/              # Documentation - loaded on-demand via MCP
│   └── index.md
├── rules/             # Mandatory guidance - always loaded
│   └── standards.md
└── skills/            # Agent capabilities
    └── my-skill/
        └── SKILL.md

See Configuration files for complete tile.json reference.