KN-86 Cartridge SDK Documentation

Public developer documentation for the Kinoshita KN-86 Deckline cartridge authoring SDK (kn86).

The KEC Lisp language itself — built-ins, standard library, memory model, and language standard — is documented at its own site: https://kinoshita-electronics-consortium.github.io/kec-lisp/. This SDK covers the KN-86 device layer (NoshAPI, .kn86 format) on top of that language.

Pages

• Getting Started — 30-minute walkthrough from cold install to a running .kn86 cart. Start here.
• FFI Reference — every NoshAPI primitive (auto-generated from docs/adr/ADR-0005-ffi-surface.md; regenerate with kn86 docs ffi).

Source-of-truth

Concern	Authoritative document
FFI surface enumeration	docs/adr/ADR-0005-ffi-surface.md
.kn86 container format	docs/adr/ADR-0006-cart-format-v2.md
Embedded Lisp scripting	docs/adr/ADR-0001-embedded-lisp-scripting-layer.md
Fe VM sizing & arena rules	docs/adr/ADR-0004-vm-selection.md
Hardware constants (display, font, keys)	CLAUDE.md § Canonical Hardware Specification
Lisp gameplay paradigm	docs/software/cartridges/authoring/lisp-paradigm.md
Screen layout contract	docs/software/cartridges/authoring/screen-design-rules.md
NoshAPI versioning rules	docs/software/api-reference/nosh-api/versioning.md

Source code

• CLI + library — sdk/tools/kn86-sdk/ (this crate; published as kn86-sdk)
• Underlying packager — sdk/tools/kn86cart/ (used as a library by the SDK)
• Reference emulator — hosts/emulator/ (target of kn86 run)
• Reference carts — carts/carts/*.lsp