Borrowing it
Nothing to install: this file belongs to MachineWisdomAI/fava-trails. 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/MachineWisdomAI/fava-trails/main/AGENTS.mdgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/MachineWisdomAI/fava-trailsWrote 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/machinewisdomai/fava-trails/agents-md)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/instructions/machinewisdomai/fava-trails/agents-md"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/machinewisdomai/fava-trails/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/machinewisdomai/fava-trails/agents-md"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/machinewisdomai/fava-trails/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 | $0.04474 | $0.04474 |
| Opus 5.5 | $0.01790 | $0.01790 |
| Sonnet 5.5 | $0.00895 | $0.00895 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00447 | $0.00447 |
Grade A, and why
fava-trails 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 13d 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.
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 332 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
FAVA Trails — Agent Reference 🫛👣
Agent-facing reference for FAVA Trails MCP tools. For project setup and configuration, see AGENTS_SETUP_INSTRUCTIONS.md and README.md. For the ordered session procedure (scope, retrieval, promotion, handling rejected or errored reviews, correction), see AGENTS_USAGE_INSTRUCTIONS.md. If you are about to change this repository's source, read CONTRIBUTING.md first.
Governed recall
FAVA is the governed institutional record for decisions, observations, validation,
and lineage. It is not the operational working-context store. Default recall
and get_thought expose current approved records only. Explicit mode="authoring"
retrieves only the server-configured agent's draft/proposed records; operator-only
mode="history" selects lifecycle statuses and superseded records. Neither a
namespace nor a supplied agent_id grants access. See governed-recall.md
for identity setup, compatibility, approval provenance, and interrupted-write recovery.
The operator configures FAVA_TRAILS_AGENT_ID on a dedicated process; caller
agent_id must match it. A shared endpoint is one identity boundary. Configure
FAVA_TRAILS_OPERATOR=1 only on a separate operator-controlled endpoint.
recall is lexical substring-AND matching, not semantic search.
Scope Discovery
Every tool call requires trail_name — a slash-separated scope path (e.g. mw/eng/fava-trails). Resolve in priority order:
| Priority | Source | Set where |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | FAVA_TRAILS_SCOPE env var |
Process environment (optional) — per-worktree override |
| 2 | .fava-trails.yaml scope |
Project root (committed) — default for all clones |
| 3 | FAVA_TRAILS_SCOPE_HINT |
MCP server env block — broad fallback |
If FAVA_TRAILS_SCOPE is not set but .fava-trails.yaml exists, read its scope field and use that value as trail_name. Agents must not silently create or edit application-owned .env files. Operators may export FAVA_TRAILS_SCOPE as an optional process override. If neither source exists, use the scope hint from tool descriptions and prompt the user to create a .fava-trails.yaml.
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.
- 13d ago Changed · -14 lines · +569 tokens per session e592228e5c3c
- 15d ago Changed · +14 tokens per session 35fabf318ebf
- 22d ago Changed · +17 tokens per session 7bc297ba3756
- 1mo ago Changed · +4 lines · +49 tokens per session 06f21432e5f2
- 1mo ago Changed · +20 tokens per session e2fa29c0a0f5
- 2mo ago Changed · +16 lines · +189 tokens per session f541d1e3d03f
- 2mo ago First seen · 326 lines · 3,616 tokens per session scan A 7e7e7a877d9b
fava-trails AGENTS.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository MachineWisdomAI/fava-trails (26 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 4,474 tokens to every session, about $0.0179 per session on Opus 5.5. 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.
fava-trails AGENTS.md compared with instructions from other repositories
| Mod | Type | Stars | Last push | Licence | Scan | Tokens | Works with |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| fava-trails AGENTS.mdMachineWisdomAI/fava-trails | Instructions file | 26 | yesterday | Apache-2.0 | A | 4,474 | Codex, OpenCode |
| vscode buildNext.instructions.mdmicrosoft/vscode | Instructions file | 195k | yesterday | MIT | A | 9,719 | GitHub Copilot |
| next.js AGENTS.mdvercel/next.js | Instructions file | 143k | yesterday | MIT | A | 7,461 | Codex, OpenCode |
| langchain AGENTS.mdlangchain-ai/langchain | Instructions file | 149k | yesterday | MIT | A | 4,680 | Codex, OpenCode |
| vscode oss-third-party-notices.instructions.mdmicrosoft/vscode | Instructions file | 195k | yesterday | MIT | A | 5,516 | GitHub Copilot |
| vscode copilot-instructions.mdmicrosoft/vscode | Instructions file | 195k | yesterday | MIT | A | 3,093 | GitHub Copilot |
| deepseek-harness AGENTS.mddeepseek-ai/deepseek-harness | Instructions file | 274k | 2d ago | MIT | A | 4,313 | Codex, OpenCode |