manual_slop/conductor/directives/preserve_line_endings/v1.md

Preserve existing line endings (CRLF on Windows, LF on Linux); do not normalize via tools

The whitespace-and-EOL rule (mandatory for set_file_slice)

The new_content must preserve:

• The file's line ending convention (CRLF on Windows, LF on Linux — pick from the surrounding file, not from your text editor's default)
• The indentation of the surrounding code (1 space per level, per conductor/code_styleguides/python.md §1)
• The number of lines replaced (start_line..end_line must equal len(new_content.splitlines()))

If you mismatch any of these, the file will fail to parse. Run py_check_syntax and a real import after every set_file_slice.

Do NOT normalize line endings via git smudge. This repo has a mix of CRLF and LF; repo-wide LF standardization is a future track. For now, preserve existing line endings on edit.