Self-Documenting System

Ze is self-documenting: every plugin, environment variable, RPC, event type, and CLI command is registered at startup and discoverable at runtime. Nothing exists unregistered -- the system enforces this with compile-time registration (init()) and runtime abort on unregistered access (env.MustRegister()).

Runtime Introspection

Command	What it shows
`ze schema list`	All registered YANG modules (65 modules)
`ze schema show <module>`	Full YANG content for a module
`ze schema methods [module]`	All RPCs with parameters from YANG
`ze schema events`	All notification/event types from YANG
`ze schema handlers`	Which handler serves which YANG module
`ze schema protocol`	Protocol version and wire format info
`ze env list`	All registered environment variables with types and defaults
`ze env list -v`	Same, plus current values
`ze env get <key>`	Details for a single environment variable
`ze --plugins`	All registered plugins with families, capabilities, dependencies
`ze help command [filter]`	Full command catalog, filterable, with descriptions
`ze help command --json`	Command catalog as JSON (for wiki generation, tooling)
`ze help ai`	Machine-readable command reference generated from live binary
`ze help ai api`	Daemon API endpoints (`ze-show:`, `ze-set:`, ...) with parameters

Build-Time Verification

Make target	What it does
`make ze-inventory`	Full project inventory: plugins, YANG modules, RPCs, families, tests, packages
`make ze-inventory-json`	Same as above, machine-readable JSON
`make ze-command-list`	Every CLI command with wire method, help text, read-only flag, source
`make ze-validate-commands`	Cross-check YANG command tree against registered handlers
`make ze-doc-drift`	Detect documentation that no longer matches code

Design Principle

The self-documenting property emerges from the registration architecture:

Plugins register via registry.Register() in init() -- name, families, capabilities, YANG schema, dependencies, event types, send types, features
Environment variables register via env.MustRegister() -- calling env.Get() with an unregistered key aborts the process
RPCs are defined in YANG schemas -- no command handler exists without a schema definition
CLI dispatch is auto-generated from registrations -- no hand-wired dispatch tables
Tab completion is driven by YANG schemas -- new config leaves appear automatically
Web UI is generated from YANG schemas -- no hardcoded forms

The result: adding a plugin with a YANG schema automatically updates the CLI, web UI, tab completion, schema discovery, inventory, and environment variable listing. No manual wiring.

No other open-source BGP daemon provides runtime introspection of its own capabilities.