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davidvornholtdavidvornholt/mail-mcp/AGENTS.md

mail-mcp

AGENTS.md2 starsChanged 8 days agoMITView on GitHub

Don't weaken a quality gate to make a change pass. Explain every inline suppression where it appears. Use a configuration exception only where a rule can't apply, scoped to the affected path and rule. Don't build backwards compatibility by default. Code in these repositories has no consumers outside them, so migrate every call site and delete the old shape in the same change. Ask before choosing product intent or another costly, durable direction. Write the question for someone with no…

1 other project uses a version of this.

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Most recently taken up by

  • Other versions1 project uses a version of this.

    Word for word · 1

    1. davidvornholt/mailbox★ 2100% same

    Edited · 0

    None found.

    Wrote their own version · 0

    None found.

    How matches are found. Word for word: the exact same text. Edited: shares passages with this file (“99% same” means 99% of its five-word phrases also appear here; 10% or more counts). Their own version: similar meaning, or, weakest, the same name. We can’t tell which project had it first. Projects are counted among the 200 most-starred candidates, and mentions are links to the repository we found, up to 50 per site, so both counts are a floor.

  • 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 repository13 other files it gives its agents.

The file

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

8 rules. About 0 are common, 6 are distinctive, and 2 are very specific to this project.

  • ≈0

    Common · estimate

    Many files like this have a rule of this kind.

  • ≈6

    Distinctive · estimate

    This author's own choices. Worth a look.

  • 2

    Very specific

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

  • Common
  • Distinctive
  • Very specific
  1. Distinctive:

    Don't weaken a quality gate to make a change pass.

    line 5
  2. Distinctive:

    Don't build backwards compatibility by default.

    line 9
  3. Distinctive:

    Ask before choosing product intent or another costly, durable direction.

    line 11
  4. Very specific:

    Use Bun only, at the exact version declared by the root packageManager.

    line 15
  5. Very specific:

    Use Effect extensively wherever it makes sense, because it helps agents write more robust code.

    line 32
  6. Distinctive:

    Write plainly and directly, in literal wording and complete sentences that are easy to follow.

    line 36
  7. Distinctive:

    Use sentence case for reader-facing text, including Markdown headings.

    line 38
  8. Distinctive:

    Don't hard-wrap Markdown prose.

    line 40

≈ “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

AGENTS.md

Quality gates

Don't weaken a quality gate to make a change pass. Explain every inline suppression where it appears. Use a configuration exception only where a rule can't apply, scoped to the affected path and rule.

Change policy

Don't build backwards compatibility by default. Code in these repositories has no consumers outside them, so migrate every call site and delete the old shape in the same change.

Ask before choosing product intent or another costly, durable direction. Write the question for someone with no background who hasn't read the code: explain what's at stake and where each option leads, and recommend one before presenting technical evidence.

Package management

Use Bun only, at the exact version declared by the root packageManager. Workspaces that use the Bun runtime or bun:test types declare @types/bun themselves.

Architecture

  • App code lives in apps/*. Business logic belongs in src/features/<domain> and app-wide infrastructure in src/shared. Code used by one app stays in that app unless it has an intentional shared contract.
  • Shared code lives in packages/*, by default as src/<capability>.ts(x) with colocated tests, and with deeper folders only when the capability needs them.
  • Package names use the project alias @<actual-project-name>/<package-name>. Canonical packages use @davidvornholt and change in the standards repository.
  • Entrypoints route, parse initial inputs, wire Effect layers, and bridge to the runtime or UI.
  • Dependencies flow entrypoint -> features -> shared -> packages. Features don't import sibling features, and cross-package imports use package aliases rather than relative paths.
  • A cohesive boundary file may exceed the 400-line lint limit through a scoped biome.jsonc override and an entry in docs/quality/no-excessive-lines-per-file-exceptions.md.

Workspace scripts

Operational scripts belong in the owning workspace's package.json. Root scripts stay minimal: the quality gates, including lint and lint:fix, plus a few filtered Turbo aliases that are actually useful. Biome lints the whole repository once from the root, so workspaces don't declare lint scripts. Canonical repo-spanning workflows and convenience recipes live in the root justfile, and project-specific recipes in local.just.

Effect standards

Use Effect extensively wherever it makes sense, because it helps agents write more robust code. In an Effect v4 workspace, follow the agent guide shipped at node_modules/effect/AGENTS.md, because v4's API differs from the v3 most models learned.

Writing style

Write plainly and directly, in literal wording and complete sentences that are easy to follow. Avoid mannered prose and stock phrases, and don't compress sentences into fragments to save words.

Use sentence case for reader-facing text, including Markdown headings.

Don't hard-wrap Markdown prose.

Documentation and instructions

Agents are the main readers of documentation, skills, and instructions, and every word costs tokens on each read. Write only what a capable model can't learn from the code or infer on its own, give the reason for a rule that isn't obvious, and state each fact once. Keep history and status in PRs and issues, and cut documentation in the same change that makes it stale.

Project-specific rules

This is a canonical file from the standards repository. Project-specific rules belong in AGENTS.local.md.

@AGENTS.local.md

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