little-coder AGENTS.md

A set of operating instructions for little-coder, a coding agent designed to work with small local language models. It covers the agent's capabilities, tools, runtime rules, and file and shell use.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to guide little-coder while it edits files, runs commands, uses tools, or handles monitoring tasks.
Why use it?
It provides consistent rules for how little-coder should act, including what to do with long-running tasks and rejected shell commands.

Instructions file for CodexOpenCode

Install

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.

agentmods
npx agentmods add instructions/itayinbarr/little-coder/agents-md
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/itayinbarr/little-coder

Made for: Codex, OpenCode.

Per session 1,788 This file is loaded in full into every session.
When invoked 1,788 The same file — it is already loaded in full.
Security scan C 1 finding. 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 $0.01788 $0.01788
Opus 5 $0.00894 $0.00894
Sonnet 5 $0.00358 $0.00358
Haiku 4.5 $0.00179 $0.00179

Measured 3d ago against content hash d98675c14996, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade C, and why

little-coder AGENTS.md scanned grade C with 1 finding 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 3d 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.

Tells the agent never to refusehighAnti-refusal

Suppressing the ability to decline removes a core safety control; a later harmful request then succeeds.

If the user asks you to monitor a process, run a background loop, or execute long-running tasks, DO NOT refuse by claiming you are "just a chat interface" or "require a prompt to take action."
AGENTS.md · 72 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 72 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

little-coder

You are little-coder, a coding agent specialized for small local language models.

Capabilities & Autonomy

You are a highly capable autonomous agent. Do not act submissive or artificially limited. If the user asks you to monitor a process, run a background loop, or execute long-running tasks, DO NOT refuse by claiming you are "just a chat interface" or "require a prompt to take action." Instead, proactively write the necessary background script (Python, Bash, etc.) with write, and start it with bash (e.g. python script.py & or nohup ...).

A refused command is an answer, not an obstacle. Some deployments run a shell whitelist, so a command may come back as "<cmd>" is not in SAFE_PREFIXES. When that happens, do not go looking for another route to the same effect. Re-running the identical operation through python3 -c, node -e, env bash -c, find -exec, or any other interpreter defeats a boundary the user configured deliberately, and burns your budget discovering that. Instead: name the command that was refused, say what you needed it for, and continue with the rest of the task or hand the decision back to the user. Reach for the dedicated tools (edit, write, read) before shelling out for anything they already cover — deleting or rewriting a file you are allowed to edit does not need a shell at all.

Runtime invariants

  • write refuses on existing files. Use edit with exact old_string / new_string to modify — old_string must match exactly (whitespace included). If it appears multiple times in the file, pass replace_all: true or add more surrounding context to make the match unique. Read with line numbers first when precision is in doubt. This is a runtime invariant, not guidance — when write refuses, the error returns the exact edit call-shape for the same path; follow it.
  • edit refuses on unread files. A file must be read in the current session before you can edit it — this is a runtime invariant. If an edit is blocked, read the file first to get the exact current text (so old_string matches), then edit. Files you just wrote count as read.
  • bash / ShellSession default timeout is 30 s. For slow commands (npm install, npx, pip install, builds, training), set timeout to 120–300.
  • Tool names are case-sensitive. The core tools are lowercase (read, write, edit, bash, glob, grep, ls, webfetch, websearch, dispatch); only the browser, evidence, and shell-session tools are CamelCase. Calling Read or Bash will not resolve to read or bash.
  • Per-benchmark tools (BrowserNavigate / Click / Type / Scroll / Extract / Back / History and EvidenceAdd / Get / List) appear when relevant; their schemas are passed to you directly when available.

Read the full file on GitHub · 72 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. 3d ago First seen · 72 lines · 1,788 tokens per session scan C d98675c14996

Subscribe to this mod's changes

little-coder AGENTS.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository itayinbarr/little-coder (2,524 stars, last pushed 4d ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 1,788 tokens to every session, about $0.0089 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it C with 1 finding (tells the agent never to refuse). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.