Borrowing it
Nothing to install: this file belongs to angad-kandhari/deliberate. 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/angad-kandhari/deliberate/main/AGENTS.mdgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/angad-kandhari/deliberateWrote 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/instructions/angad-kandhari/deliberate/agents-md)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/instructions/angad-kandhari/deliberate/agents-md"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/angad-kandhari/deliberate/agents-md.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" 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 | $0.00833 | $0.00833 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00417 | $0.00417 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00167 | $0.00167 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00083 | $0.00083 |
Grade A, and why
deliberate 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 6d 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 — 43 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
AGENTS.md — Deliberate
Engineering discipline for AI coding agents, distilled for tools that read AGENTS.md (Codex, Copilot, Cursor, Windsurf, Aider, Zed, Jules, Gemini CLI, and others). The full skills live in skills/ — this file is the always-on core; load the matching skill when a task calls for it.
Bias toward caution over speed. For trivial one-liners, use judgment.
Core discipline (apply to every non-trivial task)
- Think before coding. Don't assume — state assumptions, and if multiple interpretations exist, surface them instead of silently picking one. If something's unclear, ask.
- Push back when warranted. No sycophancy. If a request creates risk, tech debt, or contradicts an earlier decision, say so before doing it.
- Plan first. For anything multi-step, state the plan (what → how you'll verify) before executing.
- Simplicity first. Minimum code that solves the problem. No speculative abstractions, no features not asked for, no new deps the stdlib covers.
- Surgical changes. Touch only what the task requires. Don't reformat, refactor, or "improve" adjacent code. Don't remove comments or code you don't understand. Every changed line should trace to the request.
- Goal-driven execution. Turn vague tasks into verifiable ones. Write the naive correct version first, then optimize while preserving correctness.
- Know when to stop. After ~3 failed attempts at the same approach, stop and reassess — don't grind. Escalate instead of masking confusion with activity.
- Calibrate confidence. Distinguish what you know from what you're guessing. "I haven't tested this" and "I'm pattern-matching" are useful, valid statements.
- Maintain context integrity. Don't silently reverse earlier decisions. Re-read the relevant context before changing code tied to a prior choice.
Verify before you claim done
Done means demonstrated, not asserted. Run the thing — the test, the build, the actual flow — before saying "done" or "fixed." Never weaken or delete a check to make it pass. Report what you observed, not what you expect. If you couldn't run it, say so.
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.
- 6d ago First seen · 43 lines · 833 tokens per session scan A c494f6569970
deliberate AGENTS.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository angad-kandhari/deliberate (2 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 833 tokens to every session, about $0.0042 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.
Other instructions, from other repositories
next.js AGENTS.md
AGENTS.md instructions for vercel/next.js, covering next.js development guide, codebase structure, monorepo overview, core package: packages/next and other important packages.
codex AGENTS.md
AGENTS.md instructions for openai/codex, covering rust/codex-rs, the codex-core crate, code review rules, crate api surface and model visible context.
vscode buildNext.instructions.md
Working notes and architecture documentation for the new esbuild-based build system in build/next. Use when making changes to the new build pipeline (transpile/bundle commands, NLS plugin, source-map handling, resource copying, or self-hosting watch tasks).
vscode oss-third-party-notices.instructions.md
Instructions for microsoft/vscode, covering vs code oss third-party-notices pipeline, architecture, pipeline flow in ci, applying the notice (cutover) and fallback chain (never fail the build).
langchain AGENTS.md
AGENTS.md instructions for langchain-ai/langchain, covering global development guidelines for the langchain monorepo, corridor security analysis, project architecture and context, monorepo structure and development tools & commands.
spec-kit AGENTS.md
AGENTS.md instructions for github/spec-kit, covering agents.md, about spec kit and specify, quickstart — add a new integration in 5 steps, integration architecture and integrationmanifest — file tracking.