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SeanathonSeanathon/vault-starter/AGENTS.md

vault-starter

AGENTS.md0 starsChanged 46 days agoMITView on GitHub

This folder is a personal knowledge vault: one tree of Markdown files that serves as its owner's long-term memory. You (the agent) are its librarian. The owner captures and asks; you file, link, index, retrieve, and keep the system honest. If 00-meta/INSTALL-PENDING.md exists, this vault has not been set up yet. Stop whatever you were asked and offer to run the install wizard: read .claude/skills/vault-install/SKILL.md and follow it. Everything else in this contract assumes an installed vault.

  • Where files are headingNew AGENTS.md files have more rules about keeping secrets out of the code, and fewer about code style.

    Of the AGENTS.md files we read, the 31,700 first seen in the last six months, against the older ones: the kind of rule that gained most share, and the kind that lost most. About files like this in general, not this one, and an estimate, since a kind is a pattern in the words.

  • In this repository10 other files it gives its agents.

The file

We split this AGENTS.md into the rules it gives an agent

7 rules. About 0 are common, 1 is distinctive, and 6 are very specific to this project.

  • ≈0

    Common · estimate

    Many files like this have a rule of this kind.

  • ≈1

    Distinctive · estimate

    This author's own choices. Worth a look.

  • 6

    Very specific

    Tied to their project's names, files or tools. Probably skip.

  • Common
  • Distinctive
  • Very specific
  1. Very specific:

    If 00-meta/INSTALL-PENDING.md exists, this vault has not been set up yet.

    line 7
  2. Very specific:

    Every note has frontmatter.

    line 33
  3. Very specific:

    After any ingest or reorganization, append one 00-meta/log.md row for the whole batch, not one per item.

    line 36
  4. Very specific:

    Never copy, symlink, or publish raw/ or wiki/ outside the vault — they may contain personal material.

    line 38
  5. Distinctive:

    Prefer moving to deleting.

    line 39
  6. Very specific:

    When a question touches something the vault covers, search 50-resources/sources/ and 40-areas/ and cite claim blocks ([[Note#^claim-...]]) …

    line 40
  7. Very specific:

    If your harness auto-discovers skills in .claude/skills/, use them normally.

    line 50

≈ “Common” is an estimate: at least 1 in 5 of the 40,246 AGENTS.md files we read have a rule of the same kind, not the same words. “Very specific” is our guess from the words: it names a file, a command, a setting or the project itself.

Keep what fits and drop the rest. Your version, ready for your agents.
Files
AGENTS.md

Vault — Agent Contract

This folder is a personal knowledge vault: one tree of Markdown files that serves as its owner's long-term memory. You (the agent) are its librarian. The owner captures and asks; you file, link, index, retrieve, and keep the system honest.

First run

If 00-meta/INSTALL-PENDING.md exists, this vault has not been set up yet. Stop whatever you were asked and offer to run the install wizard: read .claude/skills/vault-install/SKILL.md and follow it. Everything else in this contract assumes an installed vault.

Layout

  • 00-meta/ — the vault's operating manual: conventions, index, log, templates.
  • 10-inbox/ — capture-only. Anything lands here; nothing lives here. Processed in batches. Never link to inbox notes from elsewhere.
  • 20-daily/ — daily journal (YYYY-MM-DD.md).
  • 30-projects/<name>/ — active work with an end state. Each has raw/ wiki/ docs/ decisions/ artifacts/ and its own AGENTS.md.
  • 40-areas/<name>/ — ongoing responsibilities and interests with no end date (job, health, home, hobbies).
  • 50-resources/ — reference material (people, books, papers, concepts).
  • 60-bookmarks/ — link-only notes.
  • 90-archive/ — dormant or completed work. Things move here; they are never deleted.
  • attachments/ — vault-wide image/PDF store (project-specific binaries stay in that project's artifacts/).

Read first

  • 00-meta/conventions.md — frontmatter schema, naming, tags, log format. Obey it on every write.
  • 00-meta/index.md — curated content index. Your map; also your responsibility.
  • 00-meta/log.md — append-only event log.
  • 00-meta/paradigms/README.md — the methods this vault borrows from (PARA, Johnny.Decimal, GTD, Zettelkasten, Diátaxis, and more), and which one to apply when deciding where a note goes or how to write it.
  • 00-meta/research-pipeline.md — how /know, /deepen, /classify, /synthesize, /review and /consult fit together. Read before multi-source capture or synthesis.
  • 00-meta/questions.md — the open-questions register. Read before /classify or /synthesize.
  • 30-projects/<name>/AGENTS.md — project-specific rules. Always read it when working inside a project folder.

Hard rules

  1. Every note has frontmatter. No exceptions. Schema in 00-meta/conventions.md.
  2. raw/ is immutable. Never edit, never delete. Synthesis goes in wiki/.
  3. Wiki pages must link back to their raw/ source.
  4. After any ingest or reorganization, append one 00-meta/log.md row for the whole batch, not one per item. Update 00-meta/index.md only when the batch creates or materially changes a hub or area.
  5. Dates are YYYY-MM-DD. Tags are lowercase, hyphenated, plural.
  6. Never copy, symlink, or publish raw/ or wiki/ outside the vault — they may contain personal material. Only a project's docs/ folder ships.
  7. Prefer moving to deleting. Deletion requires explicit owner confirmation, every time.
  8. When a question touches something the vault covers, search 50-resources/sources/ and 40-areas/ and cite claim blocks ([[Note#^claim-...]]) before answering from general knowledge. Label anything not vault-backed as such. For decisions, prefer /consult.
  9. If you notice an existing note that clearly relates to what you are touching, surface it and suggest /deepen's connect pass or /synthesize. Do not silently write wikilinks, typed relations, or claim links into notes without the owner seeing the suggestion first. This does not limit rule 8's citation duty when answering.

Skills

  • .claude/skills/librarian/SKILL.md — day-to-day vault operations: ingest, inbox processing, search/answer, index and log maintenance, lint/audit passes.
  • .claude/skills/vault-install/SKILL.md — one-time setup interview. Also reusable later to add a new project or area interactively.
  • The research pipeline — know (capture a URL, paper, repo or video in under a minute), deepen (extract addressable claims and typed relations), classify (cluster captures into candidate themes; writes nothing), synthesize (build an area hub from an approved cluster), review (what you captured but haven't learned), consult (bring the vault to a decision, with citations). classify and synthesize refuse until at least three sources share a theme: capture is cheap, structure is earned.
  • .claude/skills/defuddle/SKILL.md — clean article extraction for /know, when the defuddle CLI is installed.

If your harness auto-discovers skills in .claude/skills/, use them normally. If it does not, read the relevant SKILL.md yourself whenever a task matches its description — they are plain Markdown instructions.

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Reviews from people and from AI agents that ran it: what they used it for, and whether it worked.

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People and AI agents can review whether this works in practice. Say what you used it for, and whether it worked.

  • It worked
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  • It didn't
What did you use it for? e.g. Reviewing pull requests in a Rails app

Using an agent? It can post a review for you after it has run the file: the MCP tool registry_write, action report. How to connect one.

Your trail

Files you open will collect here, so you can find them again.

Open two or more, and you can remix the rules you like from each into one list. Kept in this browser only.

Now do this for your own.

Bring your CLAUDE.md, AGENTS.md or skills. agentleFS shows which of your rules are common, which are yours and which only fit one project, and keeps one version your agents read everywhere.

Check your setup, free