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.
npx agentmods add instructions/isaacsight/kernel/claude-mdgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/isaacsight/kernelWrote 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/isaacsight/kernel/claude-md)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/instructions/isaacsight/kernel/claude-md"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/isaacsight/kernel/claude-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 | $0.00812 | $0.00812 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00406 | $0.00406 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00162 | $0.00162 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00081 | $0.00081 |
Grade A, and why
kernel 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 today.
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.
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 66 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
CLAUDE.md — kernel.chat group
This file is a shim. The canonical project reference is
KERNEL.md. Read that first.CLAUDE.md exists because Claude Code auto-loads it at session start; the canonical reference moved to KERNEL.md on 2026-04-29 when the project's two surfaces (kbot agent + kernel.chat magazine) became co-equal and the older
K:BOT-as-product + web-as-companionframing stopped describing the work.
What you need to know in 30 seconds
Two surfaces, one publication:
- kbot — open-source terminal AI agent (
@kernel.chat/kboton npm). Currently v4.5.0. ~100 specialty skills curated from 670 in v4.0 with a public audit trail. Local-first, BYOK, MIT. - kernel.chat — editorial magazine. Currently on ISSUE 426 — THE WEATHER OVER THE QUEUE. Sixty-seven issues in the catalog. POPEYE-grammar anchored, PAPERSKY + WIRED decoded as editorial neighbours.
Discipline (same on both surfaces): count what gets read; cut what doesn't; file the audit in public; keep the manuscripts in the drawer. The room is different, the job is the same.
Where to look for what
| If you need… | Read |
|---|---|
| Project shape, current state, directory map, ship flow | KERNEL.md |
| Magazine publishing workflow | src/content/issues/PUBLISHING.md |
| Magazine visual grammar | docs/design-language.md |
| Unified creative canvas handoff and agent-control contracts | docs/creative-canvas-handoff.md |
| kbot v5 futures substrate | packages/kbot/V5_FUTURES_PLAN.md |
| Why the 4.0 cut went the way it did | packages/kbot/RELEASE_NOTES_4_0.md |
| Per-session working memory | SCRATCHPAD.md |
Five rules that always apply
- Magazine vocabulary in user-visible copy. Issue / feature / spread / folio / monument / colophon / dateline / postmark — never dashboard / panel / card / widget / modal. Never name "POPEYE" on the site.
- Evidence-cited commits. Every release commit cites numbers and reasoning; audit trails (CSV, JSONL, RELEASE_NOTES) ship alongside code changes.
- BYOK is the contract. kbot never hardcodes a provider preference. Local-first when there's a free path (Ollama/LLaDA/MLX) for the task.
- No emojis in code or user-visible copy unless the user explicitly asks (single-glyph system asterisk ★ is the exception, ratified in ISSUE 370).
- Update SCRATCHPAD.md at session end. Future sessions inherit your context through it.
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.
- today First seen · 66 lines · 812 tokens per session scan A 7ffe8a659b84
kernel CLAUDE.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository isaacsight/kernel (16 stars, last pushed 5d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 812 tokens to every session, about $0.0041 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 2026-09-03.
Other instructions, from other repositories
maidan CLAUDE.md
Instructions for david-engelmann/maidan, covering agent guide, 30-second orientation, read order, the cluster model in one paragraph and pr workflow (the short version).
prime-silo CLAUDE.md
Instructions for binary16labs/prime-silo, covering prime-silo agent navigation, current status (as of 2026-07-16), architecture in one sentence, what agents need to know and 1. agent authority (strict boundaries).
prime-silo AGENTS.md
Instructions for binary16labs/prime-silo, covering agents, documentation first, agents file index, programming guide and top-level structure.
maidan AGENTS.md
Instructions for david-engelmann/maidan: If you are connecting to a Maidan server (not hacking on this Rust repo), start here.
YodMCP AGENTS.md
AGENTS.md instructions for ANAMIZED/YodMCP, covering agents.md — working on yodmcp and new repos.
Cotal AGENTS.md
AGENTS.md instructions for Cotal-AI/Cotal, covering agents.md, what this is, read these first, commands and repository map.