definition-format

A Markdown file format for defining reusable coding agents. YAML frontmatter, a metadata block at the top of the file, sets details such as the agent’s name, parent, model, and allowed tools; the body contains its instructions.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to create agents for jobs such as code review, set agent hierarchies, choose a model, and limit available tools.
Why use it?
It provides a consistent way to create, organise, and configure specialised agents without defining them in separate systems.

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/dsswift/ion/definition-format
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/dsswift/ion
Per session 9 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 653 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 $0.00009 $0.00653
Opus 5 $0.00005 $0.00327
Sonnet 5 $0.00002 $0.00131
Haiku 4.5 $0.00001 $0.00065

Measured 2d ago against content hash 4a7ec466bd96, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

definition-format 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 2d ago.

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.

docs/agents/definition-format.md · 76 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 76 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Agent Definition Format

Agent definitions are markdown files (.md) with YAML frontmatter. The frontmatter declares agent metadata; the markdown body becomes the agent's system prompt.

File structure

---
name: code-reviewer
parent: main
description: Reviews code changes for correctness and style
model: claude-haiku-4-5-20251001
tools: [Read, Grep, Glob]
---

You are a code review specialist. Review the provided code changes
for correctness, style consistency, and potential bugs. Focus on
logic errors and missing edge cases.

Frontmatter fields

Field Required Description
name No Agent name. Defaults to the filename stem (e.g., code-reviewer.md becomes code-reviewer).
parent No Parent agent name. Empty means root agent. See hierarchies.
description No One-line description. Used in agent listings and tool descriptions.
model No Model override for this agent. When omitted, inherits the session's model. See multi-model.
tools No Tool allowlist. Accepts inline array [Read, Grep, Glob] or comma-separated values. When omitted, the agent has access to all tools.

Any frontmatter key not listed above is stored in the agent's Meta map, accessible to extensions but not used by the engine directly.

System prompt body

Everything after the closing --- fence becomes the agent's system prompt. The engine passes this as the system message when the agent runs.

The system prompt supports any markdown formatting. It is sent to the LLM as-is, with no template interpolation.

Frontmatter parsing rules

  • The file must start with --- (leading whitespace is trimmed).
  • The frontmatter block ends at the next \n--- boundary.
  • Lines starting with # inside the frontmatter are treated as comments and ignored.
  • The tools field accepts both [a, b, c] and bare a, b, c syntax.

Name resolution

When the name field is omitted, the engine derives the name from the file path:

Read the full file on GitHub · 76 lines

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. 2d ago First seen · 76 lines · 9 tokens per session scan A 4a7ec466bd96

Subscribe to this mod's changes

definition-format is an agent published in the GitHub repository dsswift/ion (4 stars, last pushed 2d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 9 tokens to every session and 653 once invoked, about $0.0000 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.