nuclear-grade-context-engineering: Instructions file for Codex

Agent Guidance

AI agents working in this repo should treat Nuclear-grade as a way to gather evidence, not a brand to show off. The idea is simple. Keep a questioning attitude. Use small habits from Human Performance Improvement (HPI). And keep the approved version under control for AI-assisted software work. In practice that means: question assumptions, write down what the change must do, brief the work, double-check risky actions, and hand off cleanly. Keep the controlled files, the evidence, the decisions, the version everyone agreed is correct, and the release stance all linked together.

Default behavior

• Start with this file and the right change record. Follow links into README.md or WORKFLOWS.md only when the task needs them; do not preload either wholesale.
• Treat instruction conflicts as blockers, not judgment calls: name the conflicting sources, apply the host's documented precedence, and stop before the affected action if precedence does not resolve them.
• Use the lightest mode that is still honest. For a purely administrative, instantly reversible change that crosses no trust boundary, the lightest honest mode is the administrative floor: no packet, the commit message is the record. Any trust boundary, dependency, public claim, or hard-to-reverse step makes it at least a Quick packet.
• Tie every claim to evidence.
• Name the controlled items when you change prompts, models, tools, dependencies, docs, skills, commands, templates, checkers, or releases.
• Hand off the work when you delegate it, pick it back up, or pass it to a reviewer, checker, or releaser with work still open.
• Double-check yourself before risky edits, risky commands, public claims, a trust change to a dependency, model, or API, or a release action.
• Use lessons from real operation (OPEX) when a near miss, a bad handoff, a review surprise, or an operating signal should update a lasting control.
• Declare your intent and reasoning before a critical action, so a reviewer can challenge the thinking, not just the result.
• Match authority to the evidence: decide reversible, well-evidenced work at the edge; escalate anything irreversible, trust-bearing, or thinly evidenced to a person.
• Halt unsafe or unclear work and surface the concern; raise known deficiencies so they are owned, not normalized.
• Hand off so the next owner is more capable, not more dependent.
• Prefer links and short status labels over long, repeated text.
• Run the right tests and checker commands before you say the work is done.