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.
npx agentmods add commands/wbern/agent-instructions/polishgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/wbern/agent-instructionsWhat 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 | $0.00013 | $0.01414 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00006 | $0.00707 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00003 | $0.00283 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00001 | $0.00141 |
Grade A, and why
polish 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.
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 189 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
General Guidelines
Output Style
- Never explicitly mention TDD in code, comments, commits, PRs, or issues
- Write natural, descriptive code without meta-commentary about the development process
- The code should speak for itself - TDD is the process, not the product
Beads is available for task tracking. Use mcp__beads__* tools to manage issues (the user interacts via bd commands).
Plan File Restriction
NEVER create, read, or update plan.md files. Claude Code's internal planning files are disabled for this project. Use other methods to track implementation progress (e.g., comments, todo lists, or external tools).
Polish
Take another pass at existing work to address issues. Unlike /code-review which only identifies problems, /polish resolves each finding by either:
- Fixing - Implement the improvement
- Skipping with justification - Document why the issue can be deferred or ignored
Phase 0: Determine Scope
Parse the argument to determine what to polish:
| Input | Action |
|---|---|
| No argument | Detect divergence point, review uncommitted + committed changes |
| Branch name | Changes from that branch to HEAD |
PR number (e.g., 123) |
Fetch PR diff from GitHub |
PR URL (e.g., github.com/.../pull/123) |
Extract PR number and fetch diff |
| File/path | Focus on specific file(s) |
For GitHub PRs:
- Try GitHub MCP first:
mcp__github__pull_request_readwithmethod: "get_diff" - Fall back to
ghCLI:gh pr diff <number> - If neither works, report error and stop
For local branches:
- Get current branch:
git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD - Detect divergence point (same logic as
/code-review) - Collect changed files from diff and uncommitted changes
Phase 1: Identify Issues
Categorize files based on these patterns:
| Category | File Patterns |
|---|---|
| Frontend/UI | *.tsx, *.jsx, components/, pages/, views/, *.vue |
| Frontend/Styling | *.css, *.scss, *.less, styles/, *.tailwind*, *.styled.* |
| Backend/API | routes/, api/, controllers/, services/, *.controller.*, *.service.*, *.resolver.* |
| Backend/Data | migrations/, models/, prisma/, schema.*, *.model.*, *.entity.* |
| Tooling/Config | scripts/, *.config.*, package.json, tsconfig.*, vite.*, webpack.*, eslint.* |
| CI/CD | .github/, .gitlab-ci.*, Dockerfile, docker-compose.*, *.yml in CI paths |
| Tests | *.test.*, *.spec.*, __tests__/, __mocks__/, *.stories.* |
| Docs | *.md, docs/, README*, CHANGELOG* |
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.
- 2d ago First seen · 189 lines · 13 tokens per session scan A 9843797952e6
polish is a command published in the GitHub repository wbern/agent-instructions (168 stars, last pushed 3mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 13 tokens to every session and 1,414 once invoked, about $0.0001 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.
Other commands, from other repositories
checklist
Generate a custom checklist for the current feature based on user requirements.
clarify
Identify underspecified areas in the current feature spec by asking up to 5 highly targeted clarification questions and encoding answers back into the spec.
specify
Create or update the feature specification from a natural language feature description.
analyze
Perform a non-destructive cross-artifact consistency and quality analysis across spec.md, plan.md, and tasks.md after task generation.
converge
Assess the current codebase against the feature's spec, plan, and tasks, then append any remaining unbuilt work as new tasks to tasks.md so implement can complete it.
implement
Execute the implementation plan by processing and executing all tasks defined in tasks.md.