Borrowing it
Nothing to install: this file belongs to CortexLM/cortex. 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/CortexLM/cortex/main/AGENTS.mdgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/CortexLM/cortexWrote 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/cortexlm/cortex/agents-md)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/instructions/cortexlm/cortex/agents-md"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/cortexlm/cortex/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/cortexlm/cortex/agents-md"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/cortexlm/cortex/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 | $0.02574 | $0.02574 |
| Opus 5.5 | $0.01030 | $0.01030 |
| Sonnet 5.5 | $0.00515 | $0.00515 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00257 | $0.00257 |
Grade A, and why
cortex 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 19d 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 — 206 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
AGENTS.md - Cortex research network
This file is the working contract for code and operator changes. Link to the canonical documentation instead of duplicating runbooks.
Product
Cortex is an autonomous research subnet on Bittensor. Proof runs inside the master. Every other challenge is a Docker container that implements the challenge contract; the master loads it from an operator registry and records its leaves.
| Challenge | Source | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
proof |
this repository | operator-created research topics evaluated by Cortex's recursive language-model engine |
bounty |
CortexLM/bounty container | useful vulnerability reports, scored from the CortexLM/backend public feed |
opentype |
OpentypeAI/challenge container | exact-gold typed-decision duels on DiffusionGemma weights |
Shares always sum to 10,000 basis points. Algorithm 1 is the legacy
bounty/proof 2,000/8,000 profile; algorithm 2 is bounty/proof 3,000/7,000
(document version >=2); algorithm 3 (document version >=3) admits any 1..64
unique ids and pays each challenge share * min(sum(leaves), 10^12) / 10^12.
Activation is a profile version bump on the master (config/challenges.toml). Design, Prism and Relearn are retired
products and their documentation has been removed. No active code, service,
challenge profile row or leaf may register them.
Start with the architecture, Proof, challenge containers and the threat model. Do not describe a fake-boundary test, one model call or a pinned image as proof of live KVM execution, scientific reproduction or on-chain payment.
Source map
| Path | Responsibility |
|---|---|
src/cortex/protocol/ |
frozen v2 SCALE (unsigned wire), Merkle and aggregation |
src/cortex/gateway/ |
durable leaves, immutable seals and burn fallback |
src/cortex/validator/ |
independent recomputation, root consensus and chain dispatch |
src/cortex/challenges/ |
container registry, weights client, public proxy and auto-updating supervisor |
src/cortex/proof/ |
topics, submissions, setup, executor offers and reward allocation |
src/cortex/rlm/ |
recursive agent, budgets, compaction, journals and shared knowledge |
src/cortex/vm/ |
Firecracker host, guest protocol and measured experiment lifecycle |
deploy/ |
Python images, master/validator roles and VM-host service |
tests/ |
protocol, service, HTTP, persistence and lifecycle regressions |
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.
- 19d ago Changed · +8 lines · +215 tokens per session bf23dd51848e
- 1mo ago Changed · -2 lines · -30 tokens per session 7d0f305e89e2
- 1mo ago Changed · +3 lines · +96 tokens per session 15c3132cf832
- 1mo ago Changed · +7 lines · +136 tokens per session ac5a4ee011f9
- 1mo ago Changed · +50 lines · -3,991 tokens per session 66508430fc15
- 1mo ago Changed · +249 tokens per session 11d20b4b3e96
- 1mo ago Changed · +229 tokens per session 6268ed76b03f
- 1mo ago Changed · +532 tokens per session 84ed800263f7
- 1mo ago Changed · +2 lines · +1,458 tokens per session 6307c48b050a
- 2mo ago First seen · 138 lines · 3,680 tokens per session scan A 83827c58ac4c
cortex AGENTS.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository CortexLM/cortex (160 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 2,574 tokens to every session, about $0.0103 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.
cortex AGENTS.md compared with instructions from other repositories
| Mod | Type | Stars | Last push | Licence | Scan | Tokens | Works with |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| cortex AGENTS.mdCortexLM/cortex | Instructions file | 160 | yesterday | Apache-2.0 | A | 2,574 | Codex, OpenCode |
| vscode buildNext.instructions.mdmicrosoft/vscode | Instructions file | 195k | today | MIT | A | 9,719 | GitHub Copilot |
| vscode oss-third-party-notices.instructions.mdmicrosoft/vscode | Instructions file | 195k | today | MIT | A | 5,516 | 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 | today | MIT | A | 4,680 | Codex, OpenCode |
| vscode copilot-instructions.mdmicrosoft/vscode | Instructions file | 195k | today | MIT | A | 3,093 | GitHub Copilot |
| vscode model-prompts.instructions.mdmicrosoft/vscode | Instructions file | 195k | today | MIT | A | 2,022 | GitHub Copilot |