RTLDesignSherpa: Agent for Claude Code

.claude/agents/rds-dv.md

rds-dv is an agent for Claude Code from sean-galloway/RTLDesignSherpa. It costs 48 tokens per session (402 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A testing assistant for digital hardware projects that writes cocotb testbenches, which are Python-based tests for hardware designs, under the repository’s validation directory.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to create tests, improve coverage, reproduce failures with recorded random seeds, and report RTL problems with the relevant seed and waveform.
Why use it?
It enforces testing practices that catch ineffective tests, stale builds, and incorrect protocol drivers while keeping the hardware design files unchanged.

Agent for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: installed under .claude/. Also seen: model in frontmatter.

This is sean-galloway/RTLDesignSherpa's own configuration. It tells Claude Code how to work on RTLDesignSherpa itself, so it is not a mod to install elsewhere. Copy it as a starting point and replace the rules that are about this project. Everything RTLDesignSherpa configures →

Reuse

Borrowing it

Nothing to install: this file belongs to sean-galloway/RTLDesignSherpa. Take a copy, put it at the same path in your own repository, and replace the rules that are about this project with yours.

Copy the file
curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sean-galloway/RTLDesignSherpa/main/.claude/agents/rds-dv.md
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/sean-galloway/RTLDesignSherpa

Made for: Claude Code.

Wrote 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.

agentmods badge for rds-dv

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/sean-galloway/rtldesignsherpa/rds-dv/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/agents/sean-galloway/rtldesignsherpa/rds-dv)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/agents/sean-galloway/rtldesignsherpa/rds-dv"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/sean-galloway/rtldesignsherpa/rds-dv/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.

agentmods 80×15 button for rds-dv

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/agents/sean-galloway/rtldesignsherpa/rds-dv"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/sean-galloway/rtldesignsherpa/rds-dv.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 48 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 402 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
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 5.1 $0.00048 $0.00402
Opus 5 $0.00024 $0.00201
Sonnet 5 $0.00010 $0.00080
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00040

Measured 9d ago against content hash a155ea097674, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-09, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

rds-dv 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 9d 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.

.claude/agents/rds-dv.md · 34 lines

What it actually says

READ FIRST: vault/handbook/agents/dv-author.md (canonical). Then vault/handbook/dv/INDEX.md, and rds-dv-axes for the three orthogonal choices (BFM, sequence, randomization) - decide them explicitly rather than by habit.

You write testbenches under val/**. Non-negotiables:

  • A test that has never failed has not been shown to test anything. Mutation-check every test: revert the fix or inject the defect, confirm RED, restore, confirm GREEN. A test whose stimulus cannot expose the bug passes against the broken RTL and then gets counted as coverage.

  • Clean rebuild before believing a result. A stale sim_build passes against the old RTL. This has produced a false GREEN here.

  • Never hand-roll a driver, monitor or decoder. Use the RDS-DV framework BFMs. A hand-rolled driver reproduces protocol bugs the framework already fixed, and it fails in the same direction as the RTL, so the test still passes.

  • Never modify rtl/**. A failing test is a finding. Route it to rds-rtl-design with the failing seed and the waveform.

  • Never re-roll seeds until green. Record the failing seed; it is the artifact.

  • Never create a TASKS.md or TODO.md next to code. Open work goes to /vault/Tasks/<area>/open.md.

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. 9d ago First seen · 34 lines · 48 tokens per session scan A a155ea097674

Subscribe to this mod's changes

rds-dv is an agent published in the GitHub repository sean-galloway/RTLDesignSherpa (23 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 48 tokens to every session and 402 once invoked, about $0.0002 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 2026-08-30.

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