Basic Memory is a local-first knowledge system that stores notes as Markdown files and connects them into a searchable knowledge graph for AI conversations. People and AI assistants use it to preserve project context across Claude, Codex, Cursor, ChatGPT, and other MCP-compatible clients. The catalogue add-ons provide Basic Memory skills, commands, instructions, MCP integrations, hooks, settings, and a plugin.
Borrowing it
Nothing to install: this file belongs to basicmachines-co/basic-memory. 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/basicmachines-co/basic-memory/main/AGENTS.mdgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/basicmachines-co/basic-memoryWrote 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/basicmachines-co/basic-memory/agents-md)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/instructions/basicmachines-co/basic-memory/agents-md"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/basicmachines-co/basic-memory/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.
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/instructions/basicmachines-co/basic-memory/agents-md"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/basicmachines-co/basic-memory/agents-md.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" 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 | $0.06758 | $0.06758 |
| Opus 5.5 | $0.02703 | $0.02703 |
| Sonnet 5.5 | $0.01352 | $0.01352 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00676 | $0.00676 |
Grade A, and why
basic-memory 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.
The source is not reproduced here
Licensed AGPL-3.0
The repository is licensed AGPL-3.0, which this catalogue does not treat as permission to reproduce the file. Read it at the source.
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 Changed · -1 lines · +25 tokens per session b991a57fd524
- 10d ago Changed · +6 lines · +153 tokens per session eb30662d073a
- 17d ago Changed · -94 lines · -1,070 tokens per session e6e542534bab
- 1mo ago First seen · 607 lines · 7,650 tokens per session scan A b2241b39831d
basic-memory AGENTS.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository basicmachines-co/basic-memory (4,251 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed AGPL-3.0. It adds 6,758 tokens to every session, about $0.0270 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.
Other instructions, from other repositories
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next.js AGENTS.md
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Copilot instructions for microsoft/vscode, covering vs code copilot instructions, project overview, root folders, core architecture (src/ folder) and built-in extensions (extensions/ folder).