Borrowing it
Nothing to install: this file belongs to hams-ollo/zen-agent-skills. 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/hams-ollo/zen-agent-skills/main/AGENTS.mdgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/hams-ollo/zen-agent-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/hams-ollo/zen-agent-skills/agents-md)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/instructions/hams-ollo/zen-agent-skills/agents-md"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/hams-ollo/zen-agent-skills/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/hams-ollo/zen-agent-skills/agents-md"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/hams-ollo/zen-agent-skills/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 | $0.05800 | $0.05800 |
| Opus 5.5 | $0.02320 | $0.02320 |
| Sonnet 5.5 | $0.01160 | $0.01160 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00580 | $0.00580 |
Grade B, and why
zen-agent-skills AGENTS.md scanned grade B with 2 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 7d 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.
Reads agent configuration directoriesmediumAgent snooping
.claude/, .codex/, .gemini/ hold keys, settings and other credentials a mod has no legitimate need for.
The reason is mechanical rather than a preference: a user-level `~/.claude/settings.json` does not reach a cloud session, and a cloud session is the exact case this hook exists for. The full argument is in the [rationale Makes network callslowCapability
Not a fault in itself. Listed so you know the mod talks to something, and to what.
- **Fetch with `urllib` and digest with `hashlib`.** Never use an agent's web-fetching tool. Those return a model-summarized markdown conversion of a page rather than its bytes, so the digest would be a digest of a summa How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 197 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
AGENTS.md: rules for the Zen Agent Skills repository
Canonical rules for every AI agent working in this repository (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, OpenCode, and any tool that reads AGENTS.md). This is the single source of truth. CLAUDE.md imports this file with @AGENTS.md, so Claude Code loads it at launch; any .cursor/rules/*.mdc or .github/copilot-instructions.md here is a thin pointer back to it. The reasons and incidents behind these rules are kept in docs/rationale/agents-md.md, so this file can stay short.
This repo is Zen Agent Skills: a portable, cross-harness library of agent skills, plus the tooling to install them into any project and any AI coding tool. It dogfoods its own system: this repository is tracked with the same init-worktracking skill it ships. Strategy lives in ROADMAP.md; atomic work lives in .tasks/; completed work is logged in CHANGELOG.md.
0. Agent reading protocol (read this first)
To keep context windows small and relevant, an agent assigned a task reads exactly:
- This file (
AGENTS.md) in full. - Its one assigned task file in
.tasks/<id>.md. - Only the files that task names in its
touched_filesfrontmatter, plus any file the task body explicitly points to.
Do not scan the whole .tasks/ directory, read other agents' task files, or read ROADMAP.md/CHANGELOG.md unless your task cites them. If your task's depends_on lists another task not yet in .tasks/done/, stop and report the blocker.
1. What this repository is
A skills library, not an application. The deliverables are the skills under .agents/skills/ and the tooling under scripts/ that distributes them. Success is measured by whether a skill is portable (works across harnesses), self-contained (needs no hidden context), and genuinely used and iterated on.
Not every script distributes a skill. Some tooling under scripts/ serves the maintainer of this repository and is not a deliverable: install.py never places it, no adopter receives it, and the portability contract in the portability-contract section therefore does not reach it. It is still bound by the stdlib rule in the conventions section, so it runs on a bare Python 3 with no install step like everything else here.
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.
- 7d ago Changed · -34 lines · -772 tokens per session 7545bf9f1024
- 1mo ago Changed · +23 lines · +745 tokens per session f638c43db6ae
- 2mo ago First seen · 208 lines · 5,827 tokens per session scan B f79ae96a19cc
zen-agent-skills AGENTS.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository hams-ollo/zen-agent-skills (2 stars, last pushed 7d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 5,800 tokens to every session, about $0.0232 per session on Opus 5.5. A static security scan graded it B with 2 findings (reads agent configuration directories, makes network calls). 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).
next.js AGENTS.md
AGENTS.md instructions for vercel/next.js, covering next.js development guide, codebase structure, monorepo overview, core package: packages/next and other important packages.
vscode oss-third-party-notices.instructions.md
Instructions for microsoft/vscode, covering vs code oss third-party-notices pipeline, architecture, pipeline flow in ci, cache eligibility and rollout and applying the notice (cutover).
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 copilot-instructions.md
Copilot instructions for microsoft/vscode, covering vs code copilot instructions, project overview, root folders, core architecture (src/ folder) and built-in extensions (extensions/ folder).
deno copilot-instructions.md
Copilot instructions for denoland/deno, covering deno development guide for github copilot, network access, high level overview, key directories and key files to understand first.