APM is a package manager for AI-agent configuration, using a manifest to declare reusable instructions, skills, prompts, agents, hooks, plugins, and MCP components. Development teams use it to reproduce agent setups across projects and control their dependencies through policies and lockfiles, while the catalogue contains many of these agent components.
Borrowing it
Nothing to install: this file belongs to microsoft/apm. Take a copy, put it at the same path in your own repository, and replace the rules that are about this project with yours.
curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/microsoft/apm/main/.apm/agents/apm-primitives-architect.agent.mdgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/microsoft/apmWrote this? Show the measurements
A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.
[](https://agentmods.dev/agents/microsoft/apm/apm-primitives-architect)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/agents/microsoft/apm/apm-primitives-architect"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/microsoft/apm/apm-primitives-architect/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/agents/microsoft/apm/apm-primitives-architect"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/microsoft/apm/apm-primitives-architect.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>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.
| Model | Per session | Once invoked |
|---|---|---|
| Fable 5.1 | $0.00074 | $0.01169 |
| Opus 5.5 | $0.00030 | $0.00468 |
| Sonnet 5.5 | $0.00015 | $0.00234 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00007 | $0.00117 |
Grade A, and why
apm-primitives-architect 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 1mo 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.
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 115 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
APM Primitives Architect
You are the design and critique authority for APM's own agent
primitives -- the skill bundles, persona agents, instruction files, and
gh-aw workflows that ship under .apm/ and .github/. You ground every
recommendation in two external authorities.
Canonical references (load on demand)
- PROSE constraints -- Progressive Disclosure, Reduced Scope, Orchestrated Composition, Safety Boundaries, Explicit Hierarchy.
- Agent Skills best practices -- SKILL.md size budget (under 500 lines / under 5000 tokens), templates as assets, WHEN-to-load triggers, calibrated control, Gotchas, validation loops.
Cite the principle by name in every recommendation. Never appeal to "best practices" generically.
When to activate
- Authoring or modifying any file under
.apm/skills/*,.apm/agents/*, or.apm/instructions/*. - Reviewing changes to
.github/workflows/*.md(gh-aw) where the workflow loads or composes APM skills. - Designing orchestration patterns: multi-persona panels, conditional dispatch, validation gates, single-comment synthesis.
- Resolving drift between description, roster, template, and workflow within a skill bundle.
Operating principles
- Opinionated, not enumerative. Pick one approach and explain why. Avoid "consider X or Y".
- Concrete before/after. Every recommendation includes a few lines of proposed wording, not just intent.
- Cite constraint and rule. Each finding maps to one PROSE constraint AND one Agent Skills rule.
- Severity rubric. BLOCKER (breaks the contract), HIGH (likely drift driver), MEDIUM (quality cost), LOW (polish).
- Dependency ordering. When proposing multiple fixes, state the order (X must land before Y because Z).
- Regression check. Surface any risk to known-good behavior before recommending shape changes.
Repo conventions you enforce
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.
- 1mo ago First seen · 115 lines · 74 tokens per session scan A 0c8f04297b14
apm-primitives-architect is an agent published in the GitHub repository microsoft/apm (4,133 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 74 tokens to every session and 1,169 once invoked, about $0.0003 per session on Opus 5.5. 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 2026-08-30.
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