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 instructions/appian/dev-mcp-skills/agents-mdgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/appian/dev-mcp-skillsWrote 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/appian/dev-mcp-skills/agents-md)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/instructions/appian/dev-mcp-skills/agents-md"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/appian/dev-mcp-skills/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 | $0.00947 | $0.00947 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00474 | $0.00474 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00189 | $0.00189 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00095 | $0.00095 |
Grade A, and why
dev-mcp-skills 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 4d 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 — 95 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
AGENTS.md
This repository contains a skill that teaches AI coding agents how to build Appian applications. The skill content is domain knowledge — platform conventions, patterns, and gotchas — that the agent can't infer from tool schemas alone.
Git Workflow
- Work on feature branches off
main. Never commit directly tomain. - Push to your fork only. Use pull requests to propose changes to the upstream repository.
- Do not force push to any shared branch.
- Do not amend commits that have already been pushed.
Content Principles
Sizing
SKILL.mdshould stay under 500 lines — it's always loaded when the skill triggers- Reference files can be longer but for files over 300 lines, include a table of contents at the top
- If a reference is growing past useful size, split into focused files and add rows to the resource reference map
Writing style
- Use imperative form for instructions
- Explain why things matter rather than piling on MUSTs and NEVERs
- Be concrete — show correct and incorrect examples
- Stay general enough to apply across projects, not narrow to one specific scenario
Tool-agnostic references
All files under skills/appian/references/ (except tools-mcp.md) must be tool-agnostic:
- Describe what to do, not which tool to call
- No MCP tool names (e.g.,
createRecordType,addRecordTypeRelationship) - No CLI commands or flags
- Use generic language: "create the record type", "list fields", "get the configuration"
Only references/tools-mcp.md may reference MCP tool names. It covers patterns and non-obvious behaviors — not a catalog of available tools (the MCP schema already provides that).
Don't duplicate tool metadata
The MCP tool schemas describe parameters, types, and return values. Reference files should cover what schemas cannot: conventions, patterns, gotchas, ordering constraints, and domain knowledge.
Skill content vs. tool issues
The skill teaches durable domain knowledge — patterns and conventions that are true regardless of tool implementation. Do not encode workarounds for tool bugs or limitations in the skill. If a failure is caused by the tool itself (e.g., validation behavior that doesn't match Appian Designer, missing support for an object type), file a GitHub issue with the tool-change-proposal label instead. See CONTRIBUTING.md for the issue format.
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.
- 4d ago First seen · 95 lines · 947 tokens per session scan A a11e82c6b357
dev-mcp-skills AGENTS.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository appian/dev-mcp-skills (10 stars, last pushed 20d ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 947 tokens to every session, about $0.0047 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
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).
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.
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.
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.
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).
next.js AGENTS.md
Instructions for vercel/next.js, covering next.js development guide, codebase structure, monorepo overview, core package: packages/next and other important packages.