docs: reframe docstring guidance as public API reference, not prompts

[ajbozarth]

Description

The "Docstrings are prompts — the LLM reads them" framing in AGENTS.md and CONTRIBUTING.md tells contributors (and coding agents) to write docstrings for an LLM audience. In practice docstrings are published verbatim in the public API reference and read by humans, so that framing has two concrete downsides:

• It steers docstrings toward an LLM audience instead of the humans reading the published reference. "Write for the LLM" is the wrong default for documentation that ships to users.
• It encourages leaking session context into docstrings. Writing a docstring with the intent that another AI will read it invites transient, conversation-specific detail into the published reference — poor practice for documentation that ships to users.

Reframing the guidance to "published in the public API reference — be specific and accurate" keeps docstrings human-facing and accurate for the shipped docs.

Testing

• Tests added to the respective file if code was changed
• New code has 100% coverage if code was added
• Ensure existing tests and github automation passes (a maintainer will kick off the github automation when the rest of the PR is populated)

Attribution

• AI coding assistants used

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Adding a new component, requirement, sampling strategy, or tool?

• Component
• Requirement
• Sampling Strategy
• Tool

[ajbozarth]

I have some personal preferences in my project memory around keeping docstring concise and direct, and to not leak session context into them. I regularly have to remind Claude to use these preferences and today my session pointed out to me that my preference conflict with the AGENTS file and pointed me at these lines.

I believe the original source of these lines came during the generation of AGENTS.md from our existing docs at the time and it picked up the best practices for writing docstrings in mellea apps which feed the docstrings for @tool functions, @generative functions, and mify methods to an LLM.