What is squads-cli AGENTS.md?

Repository instructions for agents working on squads-cli, a command-line tool that organizes autonomous AI agents into teams called squads. They explain the project structure, specifications, testing expectations, and permission rules.

Use them when changing squads-cli, especially to read the relevant architecture, philosophy, agent contract, governance, and scaffolded-project instructions before coding.

They give coding agents one source of truth before making non-trivial changes. This reduces the chance of implementing code that conflicts with the product’s documented design or governance.

How agents-squads/squads-cli configures Codex and OpenCode

Reuse

Borrowing it

Nothing to install: this file belongs to agents-squads/squads-cli. 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/agents-squads/squads-cli/main/AGENTS.md

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/agents-squads/squads-cli

Made for: Codex, OpenCode.

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.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/agents-squads/squads-cli/agents-md/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/instructions/agents-squads/squads-cli/agents-md)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/instructions/agents-squads/squads-cli/agents-md"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/agents-squads/squads-cli/agents-md/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.

Your own site · 80×15

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/instructions/agents-squads/squads-cli/agents-md"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/agents-squads/squads-cli/agents-md.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>

Per session 1,190 This file is loaded in full into every session.

When invoked 1,190 The same file — it is already loaded in full.

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.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5.1	$0.01190	$0.01190
Opus 5.5	$0.00476	$0.00476
Sonnet 5.5	$0.00238	$0.00238
Haiku 4.5	$0.00119	$0.00119

Measured 2mo ago against content hash d91c444e7135, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

squads-cli AGENTS.md 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 2mo 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.

AGENTS.md · 113 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 113 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Agent Instructions

Guidance for AI coding agents working on this repository. This is the single source of truth — CLAUDE.md imports it.

Specs — read before non-trivial changes

The product is spec'd; changes that contradict a spec need a founder-visible issue first, not code. Canonical set:

docs/architecture.md — how squads works under the hood (files, context cascade, roles, feedback loop)
docs/philosophy.md — what this product is and refuses to be
docs/agent-contract.md — the typed contract every agent runs under
docs/governance.md — permission and approval model
templates/seed/skills/squads-cli/SKILL.md — the operating loop as taught to every scaffolded project

What This Is

squads-cli is a CLI orchestrator for autonomous AI agent teams. It organizes agents into squads (domain-aligned teams), manages their context and memory, and dispatches them via native AI CLIs (claude, gemini, etc.).

The CLI is open source. Agents are the primary consumers — after squads run dispatches an agent, it calls CLI commands to read context, persist memory, and coordinate with other agents.

Repository Structure

src/
├── cli.ts              # All command registrations (Commander.js, lazy imports)
├── commands/            # One file per command — start here for any command change
├── lib/                 # Shared logic (parsing, context, memory, git, providers)
templates/               # Files generated by `squads init`
test/                    # Unit + E2E tests (vitest)

Key files by concern:

Concern	File
Squad/agent discovery	`src/lib/squad-parser.ts`
Context injection	`src/lib/run-context.ts`
Agent execution	`src/commands/run.ts`, `src/lib/execution-engine.ts`
Multi-agent conversation	`src/lib/conversation.ts`, `src/lib/workflow.ts`
Provider CLIs	`src/lib/llm-clis.ts` (integration), `src/lib/providers.ts` (registry + pricing)
Memory read/write	`src/lib/memory.ts`
Git / GitHub	`src/lib/git.ts`, `src/lib/github.ts` (gh CLI + bot identity)
Observability	`src/lib/observability.ts`, `src/lib/telemetry.ts`
Terminal output	`src/lib/terminal.ts`
Command registration	`src/cli.ts`

Read the full file on GitHub · 113 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.

2mo ago First seen · 113 lines · 1,190 tokens per session scan A d91c444e7135

Subscribe to this mod's changes

squads-cli AGENTS.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository agents-squads/squads-cli (56 stars, last pushed 12d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 1,190 tokens to every session, about $0.0048 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.

Multi-Agent Orchestration agent-framework ai-agents cli developer-tools

squads-cli AGENTS.md next to 6 instructions from other repositories
Mod	Type	Stars	Last push	Licence	Scan	Tokens	Works with
squads-cli AGENTS.mdagents-squads/squads-cli	Instructions file	56	12d ago	MIT	A	1,190	Codex, OpenCode
vscode buildNext.instructions.mdmicrosoft/vscode	Instructions file	195k	yesterday	MIT	A	9,719	GitHub Copilot
next.js AGENTS.mdvercel/next.js	Instructions file	143k	today	MIT	A	7,461	Codex, OpenCode
langchain AGENTS.mdlangchain-ai/langchain	Instructions file	149k	yesterday	MIT	A	4,680	Codex, OpenCode
vscode oss-third-party-notices.instructions.mdmicrosoft/vscode	Instructions file	195k	yesterday	MIT	A	5,516	GitHub Copilot
vscode copilot-instructions.mdmicrosoft/vscode	Instructions file	195k	yesterday	MIT	A	3,093	GitHub Copilot
deepseek-harness AGENTS.mddeepseek-ai/deepseek-harness	Instructions file	274k	2d ago	MIT	A	4,313	Codex, OpenCode

squads-cli: Instructions file for Codex