model-based-agentic-software-engineering CLAUDE.md

Repository instructions for a catalogue of 85 design patterns that help govern groups of autonomous coding agents and limit their failures.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use them when editing the catalogue site, its landing pages, entry pages, or the book, especially when adding or revising governance concepts.
Why use it?
They explain how the preview website and the fuller book should stay consistent when content is added or changed.

Instructions file

Install

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.

agentmods
npx agentmods add instructions/davisjam/model-based-agentic-software-engineering/claude-md
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/davisjam/model-based-agentic-software-engineering
Per session 4,237 This file is loaded in full into every session.
When invoked 4,237 The same file — it is already loaded in full.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
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.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.04237 $0.04237
Opus 5 $0.02119 $0.02119
Sonnet 5 $0.00847 $0.00847
Haiku 4.5 $0.00424 $0.00424

Measured 2d ago against content hash af7a638d70b3, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

model-based-agentic-software-engineering CLAUDE.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 2d 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.

CLAUDE.md · 225 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 225 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

CLAUDE.md — agent-governance-mechanisms

This repo is a pattern catalogue: 85 governance mechanisms that keep a fleet of autonomous coding agents productive while bounding their failures, each written as a Gang-of-Four-style design pattern. It is published as a static GitHub Pages site and embedded in a parent repo as a git submodule.

catalog.py is the one tool — stdlib-only, no dependencies (so python3 catalog.py … runs on a fresh checkout with nothing installed). Do not add pip dependencies; keep it clone-and-run.

Site is a preview; the book claims and expands

The published site — the landing, the catalogue views, the entry pages — is a preview: concise framings and entry points. The book (under book/) is where each idea is claimed and expanded. Two jobs, one for each surface.

The standing implication: book coverage ⊇ site framings. Any conceptual framing that appears on the site should have a fuller treatment in the book. When you add a framing to the site's landing prose (the LANDING_INTRO, the schools, the ways, the spectrum axis) or an entry page, either the book already expands it or you owe it a home there. Site-only material is limited to adoption and navigation — DIY-vs-install, the nav cards, the quick-start; those need no book counterpart. Everything conceptual does.

What is a mechanism?

A mechanism is a recurring, failure-killing pattern of governance — written like a Gang-of-Four design pattern: the failure class it prevents, the shape that prevents it, and why it is not just the cheaper thing everyone already does. A mechanism earns its own entry only when it clears three bars:

  1. It kills a failure class, not a one-off bug. If you can't name the recurring failure, it isn't a mechanism yet.
  2. It's distinct. It does something the naive or adjacent alternative can't — every entry must survive its own "Why it's not just [X]" section. Two entries built on the same pattern are distinct only when they vary a named axis (lock cardinality, object model, enforcement scope, domain); if nothing varies, merge them.
  3. Its examples instantiate it. Every example — in Motivation, in "Why it's not just…", in Known uses — must be a real case of this mechanism, not a sibling's. (A relational config-field ⊆ sample check is a coherence lint, not a per-source semantic lint — so cite it under coherence only.) An example borrowed from a neighbour blurs the exact boundary the catalogue exists to draw.

Read the full file on GitHub · 225 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.

  1. 2d ago First seen · 225 lines · 4,237 tokens per session scan A af7a638d70b3

Subscribe to this mod's changes

model-based-agentic-software-engineering CLAUDE.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository davisjam/model-based-agentic-software-engineering (18 stars, last pushed 2d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 4,237 tokens to every session, about $0.0212 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 2026-08-30.