What is ralph AGENTS.md?

A set of project instructions for coding agents working on the ralph repository. It explains the project, available commands, and how to run all tests or one test file.

Use it to understand ralph, follow its project conventions, and check changes with the full test suite or an individual test file.

It gives the agent the repository’s working rules and test commands in one place, reducing guesswork when changing code.

How marc0der/ralph configures Codex and OpenCode

Reuse

Borrowing it

Nothing to install: this file belongs to marc0der/ralph. 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/marc0der/ralph/main/AGENTS.md

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/marc0der/ralph

Made for: 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.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/marc0der/ralph/agents-md/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/instructions/marc0der/ralph/agents-md)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/instructions/marc0der/ralph/agents-md"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/marc0der/ralph/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.

Your own site · 80×15

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/instructions/marc0der/ralph/agents-md"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/marc0der/ralph/agents-md.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>

Per session 4,267 This file is loaded in full into every session.

When invoked 4,267 The same file — it is already loaded in full.

Security scan B 1 finding. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.

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.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5.1	$0.04267	$0.04267
Opus 5.5	$0.01707	$0.01707
Sonnet 5.5	$0.00853	$0.00853
Haiku 4.5	$0.00427	$0.00427

Measured 24d ago against content hash a76fa70c0a0d, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade B, and why

ralph AGENTS.md scanned grade B 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 24d 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.

Asks for rootmediumPrivilege escalation

A mod that escalates privileges can change anything on the machine, not only the project.

- Runs as `node` user with passwordless sudo ### Installation layout

Origin

Copies of this mod

1 near-identical copy found in the catalogue:

ralph CLAUDE.md — 97% identical, 5 lines differ

AGENTS.md · 124 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 124 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

AGENTS.md

This file provides guidance to Claude Code (claude.ai/code) when working with code in this repository.

What is Ralph?

Ralph is an autonomous AI coding agent loop runner. It runs iterative plan/build cycles using a configurable backend (Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, GitHub Copilot CLI, or pi) in headless mode, with shared artifacts (IMPLEMENTATION_PLAN.md, PROGRESS.md) as handoffs between iterations. All execution happens inside isolated devcontainers.

Commands

# Run all tests
bats test/

# Run a single test file
bats test/sandbox.bats

# Run a specific test by name
bats test/sandbox.bats -f "sandbox fails when config is missing"

# Lint
shellcheck ralph install.sh

CI runs both ShellCheck and BATS on every push/PR to main.

Architecture

Ralph is a single Bash script (ralph) with these commands:

Command	Purpose
`plan`	Run planning loop (max 6 iterations, exits on convergence) — requires a goal (`-g`), reads specs/source, produces `IMPLEMENTATION_PLAN.md`
`build`	Run build loop (default: open items plus 20% headroom) — picks next task, implements, tests, commits, pushes
`fix`	Run the build loop with the `fix` section of the config file — `auto` runs it as phase 6
`review`	Run one review pass — reviews the cycle's work against its cited specs, the written rules and the review catalogue, files findings as new `- [ ]` items
`sandbox`	Enter/manage devcontainer (`sandbox`, `sandbox clean`, `sandbox --rebuild`)
`init`	Initialize workspace artifacts and directories; `--config` copies the central `config.yaml` to `./ralph.yaml`
`archive`	Move artifacts to `.ralph/<timestamp>/`
`clean`	Delete artifacts
`auto`	Run `archive`, `init`, `plan`, `build`, `review`, `fix` as child processes — requires `-g`, rejects `-n`, skips a phase whose guard fails, refuses phase 3 over a stale cycle base or an uncommitted `specs/` or a spec repository on a detached `HEAD`, refuses to run outside a container without `--force`, records a failure or interrupt in `.ralph/auto-state` for `--resume`
`metrics`	Summarise a run's `metrics.jsonl`, the latest run by default
`version`	Print the version

Read the full file on GitHub · 124 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.

24d ago Changed · +10 lines · +402 tokens per session a76fa70c0a0d
29d ago Changed · +190 tokens per session 921091e41ab1
1mo ago Changed · +3 tokens per session 8bcf11e5f613
1mo ago Changed · +2 lines · +418 tokens per session 861e11ba6359
1mo ago Changed · +6 lines · +309 tokens per session 40b8e15c19ef
1mo ago Changed · +2 lines · +466 tokens per session fc96299b2175
1mo ago Changed · +195 tokens per session d75d58a17f8c
1mo ago Changed · -1 lines · -53 tokens per session 0bd8f8d5cd03
1mo ago Changed · +31 tokens per session c210d3351609
1mo ago First seen · 105 lines · 2,306 tokens per session scan B 439ab52d1af2

Subscribe to this mod's changes

ralph AGENTS.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository marc0der/ralph (11 stars, last pushed 2d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 4,267 tokens to every session, about $0.0171 per session on Opus 5.5. A static security scan graded it B with 1 finding (asks for root). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

ralph AGENTS.md next to 6 instructions from other repositories
Mod	Type	Stars	Last push	Licence	Scan	Tokens	Works with
ralph AGENTS.mdmarc0der/ralph	Instructions file	11	2d ago	MIT	B	4,267	Codex, OpenCode
vscode buildNext.instructions.mdmicrosoft/vscode	Instructions file	195k	today	MIT	A	9,719	GitHub Copilot
next.js AGENTS.mdvercel/next.js	Instructions file	143k	today	MIT	A	7,461	Codex, OpenCode
vscode oss-third-party-notices.instructions.mdmicrosoft/vscode	Instructions file	195k	today	MIT	A	5,516	GitHub Copilot
langchain AGENTS.mdlangchain-ai/langchain	Instructions file	149k	today	MIT	A	4,680	Codex, OpenCode
vscode copilot-instructions.mdmicrosoft/vscode	Instructions file	195k	today	MIT	A	3,093	GitHub Copilot
vscode ai-customization.instructions.mdmicrosoft/vscode	Instructions file	195k	today	MIT	A	1,907	GitHub Copilot

ralph: Instructions file for Codex