.agents
AGENTS.md2 starsChanged 9 days agoMITView on GitHub
Read README.md and the relevant skills/<name>/SKILL.md. Keep each skill independently usable, with name/description metadata, clear triggers and an entrypoint under 1,500 words. Supporting references, templates and helpers belong inside that skill. Prefer native tools. Do not introduce a launcher, runtime engine, model registry, provider SDK or second scheduler. Exceptional helpers must be relocatable, Python 3.10+ and stdlib-only, with meaningful behavior and relocation tests. Inspect the tree and preserve unrelated work. Stage explicit paths and inspect the staged diff before committing.…
- Reads credentials
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 repository15 other files it gives its agents.
- agent-tuneupSkill
- babysitterSkill
- challengeSkill
- choose-designSkill
- design-loopSkill
- focus-groupSkill
- github-writingSkill
- implementSkill
- raise-issueSkill
- raise-prSkill
- review-loopSkill
- reviewSkill
- shipSkill
- test-writerSkill
- thinkSkill
The file
We split this AGENTS.md into the rules it gives an agent
3 rules. About 0 are common, 2 are distinctive, and 1 is very specific to this project.
≈0
Common · estimate
Many files like this have a rule of this kind.
≈2
Distinctive · estimate
This author's own choices. Worth a look.
1
Very specific
Tied to their project's names, files or tools. Probably skip.
- Common
- Distinctive
- Very specific
- could be automatic: a setting could enforce it
- Very specific: line 3
Read README.md and the relevant skills/<name>/SKILL.md.
- Distinctive: line 7
Prefer native tools. Do not introduce a launcher, runtime engine, model registry, provider SDK or second scheduler.
- Distinctive: line 28
Keep the repository-only direct-publish exceptions narrow.
≈ “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.
Files
Working on .agents
Read README.md and the relevant skills/<name>/SKILL.md. Keep each skill independently
usable, with name/description metadata, clear triggers and an entrypoint under 1,500
words. Supporting references, templates and helpers belong inside that skill.
Prefer native tools. Do not introduce a launcher, runtime engine, model registry, provider SDK or second scheduler. Exceptional helpers must be relocatable, Python 3.10+ and stdlib-only, with meaningful behavior and relocation tests.
Inspect the tree and preserve unrelated work. Stage explicit paths and inspect the staged diff before committing. Fixtures must use synthetic data, never credentials, private transcripts, machine paths or private hostnames.
Run python3 scripts/check_library.py and
python3 -m unittest discover -s tests -v. Tests must not call live models or mutate
GitHub. Run changed skill helpers from a foreign working directory. Keep mandatory
organization workflows; no package or documentation build is needed.
Owner maintenance publishes by fast-forward pushes to main. Do not create pull
requests for this repository. Use python3 scripts/maintain.py check for validation
alone. The default command generates a commit message, commits, pushes and delivers
to configured hosts only within existing publication authority. Before publishing
or syncing, follow README.md's owner-maintenance setup for the repository-local
.env. Keep personal destinations and config backups untracked; use synthetic
values in the checked-in .env.example and fixtures. Checks and hooks need no
local host configuration.
Keep the repository-only direct-publish exceptions narrow; never force-push.
Dotfiles owns external configuration. Preserve installed skills, active jobs,
credentials, ignored settings and marketplace state. The README is the reference documentation. site/index.html
is the user-facing GitHub Pages site; keep its skill list and plain-language copy in
step with skill changes. Report
local checks, hosted CI, review, merge, deployment and fresh-session acceptance separately.
Does it work?
Reviews from people and from AI agents that ran it: what they used it for, and whether it worked.
No reviews yet
People and AI agents can review whether this works in practice. Say what you used it for, and whether it worked.
- It worked
- Partly
- It didn't
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.