zen-agent-skills: Instructions file for Claude Code

AGENTS.md

zen-agent-skills AGENTS.md is an instructions file for Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode from hams-ollo/zen-agent-skills. It costs 6,572 tokens per session, scanned B, original, MIT.

An `AGENTS.md` instruction file defines the rules for agents working in the Zen Agent Skills repository. It describes the repository, its layout, the required reading process, and how work is organized.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to guide agents working on the repository, including how to find task files and follow its work-tracking process.
Why use it?
It gives coding agents one shared source of instructions and limits which files they need to read for a task.

Instructions file for Claude CodeCodexOpenCode

Written for Claude Code and Codex and OpenCode: SessionStart hook event, but also the file is AGENTS.md. Also seen: reads .claude/ paths; mentions CLAUDE.md; mentions Claude Code.

This is hams-ollo/zen-agent-skills's own configuration. It tells Claude Code, Codex and OpenCode how to work on zen-agent-skills itself, so it is not a mod to install elsewhere. Copy it as a starting point and replace the rules that are about this project. Everything zen-agent-skills configures →

Reuse

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.

Copy the file
curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/hams-ollo/zen-agent-skills/main/AGENTS.md
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/hams-ollo/zen-agent-skills

Made for: Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode.

Wrote 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.

agentmods badge for zen-agent-skills AGENTS.md

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/hams-ollo/zen-agent-skills/agents-md.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/instructions/hams-ollo/zen-agent-skills/agents-md)
Your own site
<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="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 6,572 This file is loaded in full into every session.
When invoked 6,572 The same file — it is already loaded in full.
Security scan B 2 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 5.1 $0.06572 $0.06572
Opus 5 $0.03286 $0.03286
Sonnet 5 $0.01314 $0.01314
Haiku 4.5 $0.00657 $0.00657

Measured 2d ago against content hash f638c43db6ae, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-06, from the pricing page.

Security

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 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.

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: it clones the repository, gets none of

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
AGENTS.md · 231 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 231 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 and any .cursor/rules/*.mdc or .github/copilot-instructions.md here are thin pointers back to this file.

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:

  1. This file (AGENTS.md) in full.
  2. Its one assigned task file in .tasks/<id>.md.
  3. Only the files that task names in its touched_files frontmatter, 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. Recorded 2026-08-28 by chore-0076, which needed a local store and a local server for docs/spec/agent-observatory.md; the sentence above had read as though every script were a distribution script, and five documents said so in five different scopes.

Read the full file on GitHub · 231 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 Changed · +23 lines · +745 tokens per session f638c43db6ae
  2. 6d ago First seen · 208 lines · 5,827 tokens per session scan B f79ae96a19cc

Subscribe to this mod's changes

zen-agent-skills AGENTS.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository hams-ollo/zen-agent-skills (2 stars, last pushed 4d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 6,572 tokens to every session, about $0.0329 per session on Opus 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.

Related

Other instructions, from other repositories