Reference: The Bootloader

STAN’s workflow depends on an assistant being able to read your attached archive.tar and load the project’s system prompt directly from the archive content:

• <stanPath>/system/stan.system.md

Related guides:

• Getting Started
• Archives & Snapshots
• STAN assistant guide — stan-cli

What the bootloader does

At the start of each chat turn (or when you attach new artifacts), the bootloader:

1. Locates the newest attached archive.tar (or archive.diff.tar when appropriate).
2. Enumerates its contents and finds <stanPath>/system/stan.system.md:
   • Prefer stanPath from stan.config.* when present.
   • Otherwise fall back to common defaults like .stan.
3. Loads stan.system.md and uses it as the governing system prompt for the rest of the turn.

This is what makes STAN “reproducible in chat”: the assistant is constrained to the exact files you shipped in the archive.

Setup

For instructions on how to set up an assistant with the bootloader (TypingMind, ChatGPT, or Gemini), please see the Getting Started guide.

Troubleshooting

If your assistant says the system prompt is missing, the fix is almost always:

• Re-run stan run and attach the resulting .stan/output/archive.tar, or
• Attach <stanPath>/system/stan.system.md directly as a raw file named stan.system.md.