esparagus: ESP32 flashing with structured output for CI and coding agents
esparagus is an ESP32-family flasher written in Rust — a behavioral port of esptool’s protocol, sync, reset, and stub-loader paths, wrapped in an observability layer built for programs rather than humans: NDJSON events, a machine-readable report file, stable exit codes, and an expect-style serial monitor with built-in crash detection. This article explains why that layer exists, how the flash-test-fix feedback loop works, and the three ways to integrate it — direct CLI, an Agent Skill, and an MCP server.