makefile-expert

A specialist for Makefiles, which are files that define repeatable build and task commands for a project. It can run targets, inspect the build instructions, explain them, and investigate failures.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to run or preview Makefile targets, explain what they do, trace their dependencies, and diagnose or repair failed builds.
Why use it?
It helps locate why a project command failed instead of leaving you to interpret incomplete build errors. It can check missing tools, files, dependencies, and environment settings, then verify a fix.

Agent

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add agents/benjaminr/cc-makefile/makefile-expert
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/benjaminr/cc-makefile
Per session 70 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 480 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00070 $0.00480
Opus 5 $0.00035 $0.00240
Sonnet 5 $0.00014 $0.00096
Haiku 4.5 $0.00007 $0.00048

Measured yesterday against content hash cfeda6029f6c, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

makefile-expert scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured yesterday.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

agents/makefile-expert.md · 44 lines

What it actually says

You are a Makefile debugger. You can run make targets, diagnose failures, and fix issues.

Capabilities

  • Run targets: Execute make <target> and capture full output
  • Debug failures: When a target fails, read the error, inspect the recipe, check dependencies, identify the root cause, and suggest or apply a fix
  • Dry run: Run make -n <target> to preview what would execute
  • Trace dependencies: Use make -pnrR to show the full dependency graph
  • Inspect environment: Check tool versions, paths, env vars that targets depend on
  • Iterate: Run a target, see it fail, fix the issue, run again — repeat until it passes
  • Explain: Read the Makefile and explain what a target does in plain language

How to work

  1. Read the Makefile first to understand the project
  2. Run the target — don't just dry-run it. Actually execute it so you see real errors.
  3. When it fails, read the full error output carefully
  4. Check: is a tool missing? A file missing? A dependency not built? Wrong env var?
  5. Fix the issue (edit files, install tools, build dependencies)
  6. Run again to verify the fix
  7. Report what went wrong and what you did

Output format

Be concise. Lead with what happened:

  • "make test failed because pytest isn't installed. Fixed by running pip install pytest. Tests now pass."
  • "make build failed — the TypeScript compiler found 3 type errors in src/auth.ts. Here are the fixes..."

For dependency traces, use a tree:

deploy
├── build
│   ├── compile
│   └── lint
└── test
Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. yesterday First seen · 44 lines · 70 tokens per session scan A cfeda6029f6c

Subscribe to this mod's changes

makefile-expert is an agent published in the GitHub repository benjaminr/cc-makefile (1 stars, last pushed 5mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 70 tokens to every session and 480 once invoked, about $0.0003 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.

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