repository-harness is a repository protocol that makes a software codebase easier for coding agents to understand and work on safely. It is for teams using Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, and similar agents who need authoritative documents, durable plans, explicit decision boundaries, and evidence for completed work. Its catalogue entries install the protocol's skills and instructions.
Borrowing it
Nothing to install: this file belongs to hoangnb24/repository-harness. 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/hoangnb24/repository-harness/main/AGENTS.mdgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/hoangnb24/repository-harnessWrote 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/hoangnb24/repository-harness/agents-md)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/instructions/hoangnb24/repository-harness/agents-md"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/hoangnb24/repository-harness/agents-md.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" 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 | $0.00332 | $0.00332 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00166 | $0.00166 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00066 | $0.00066 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00033 | $0.00033 |
Grade A, and why
repository-harness 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 8d 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.
What it actually says
Agent Instructions
Harness
Start with the requested outcome and use the repository as the system of record.
Read docs/WORKFLOW.md and only relevant product, design, plan, code, and
validation material.
- Answers, explanations, reviews, diagnoses, plans, and status reports are read-only. Inspect only what is needed; change nothing.
- For a bounded change, inspect affected behavior and proof, implement, and validate. No control-plane operation is required.
- Use one
docs/plans/active/file when work spans sessions, coordinates contributors, has dependencies, or needs recovery. Move it todocs/plans/completed/only after validation. - Before editing, identify repository authority for each new externally observable policy. If materially different choices remain open, stop before edits; configurable defaults are not authority.
- For architecture, reliability, security, or quality invariant work, read
docs/patterns/encoding-invariants.mdand enforce only accepted rules. - Report reusable agent friction. Change guidance, tools, runbooks, or validation
for that purpose only when explicitly asked to use
$improve-harness. - Also pause when product intent remains ambiguous, recovery is difficult, validation is weakened, or authority is insufficient.
- Claim completion only with executable or observable evidence. Report outcome, changes, validation, and unresolved risks.
Harness has no task database or orchestration lifecycle. Use repository plans and behavior-level proof; do not create parallel control-plane state.
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.
- 8d ago First seen · 32 lines · 332 tokens per session scan A 745a9e87a0f3
repository-harness AGENTS.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository hoangnb24/repository-harness (1,215 stars, last pushed 25d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 332 tokens to every session, about $0.0017 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.
Other instructions, from other repositories
agent-rulescope tests.instructions.md
Instructions for 13624725933/agent-rulescope, a project described as: See exactly which instructions your coding agent inherits. Scan AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md, Cursor and Copilot rules.
agent-rulescope copilot-instructions.md
Copilot instructions for 13624725933/agent-rulescope, a project described as: See exactly which instructions your coding agent inherits. Scan AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md, Cursor and Copilot rules.
codex AGENTS.md
AGENTS.md instructions for openai/codex, covering rust/codex-rs, the codex-core crate, code review rules, crate api surface and model visible context.
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.
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.