What is neotoma AGENTS.md?

A set of project instructions for working on the Neotoma codebase, including which documents to read and which rules to follow.

It directs agents to load foundation and task-specific documents and follow the required process for installation, configuration, and validation.

It helps an agent understand the project's architecture, constraints, documentation order, and setup requirements before changing code.

How markmhendrickson/neotoma configures Codex and OpenCode

Reuse

Borrowing it

Nothing to install: this file belongs to markmhendrickson/neotoma. 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/markmhendrickson/neotoma/main/AGENTS.md

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/markmhendrickson/neotoma

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/markmhendrickson/neotoma/agents-md/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/instructions/markmhendrickson/neotoma/agents-md)

Your own site

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

Per session 1,933 This file is loaded in full into every session.

When invoked 1,933 The same file — it is already loaded in full.

Security scan A 0 findings. 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	$0.01933	$0.01933
Opus 5.5	$0.00773	$0.00773
Sonnet 5.5	$0.00387	$0.00387
Haiku 4.5	$0.00193	$0.00193

Measured 2mo ago against content hash 54056e2c6aed, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

neotoma 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 2mo 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.

AGENTS.md · 107 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 107 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Neotoma Project Instructions for Codex

Document Loading Order (MANDATORY)

Every session MUST begin by loading these documents in this order:

docs/context/index_rules.mdc — Primary entrypoint; complete documentation map, reading strategies, dependency graph
Foundation documents from docs/foundation/ in this order:
- core_identity.md — What Neotoma is and is not (State Layer scope)
- philosophy.md — Core principles and architectural invariants
- layered_architecture.md — State Layer (Neotoma) and Operational Layer(s) above it
- product_principles.md — Product design principles
- agent_instructions_rules.mdc — Repository-wide agent instructions and validation checklist
Task-specific docs as indicated by the index (e.g. subsystems, architecture, testing)
- For install / MCP / configuration tasks: MUST load install.md (repo root) before any work involving installing Neotoma, configuring MCP entries, setting up LaunchAgents, changing data directories, or onboarding a new environment. install.md is the canonical CLI-driven setup sequence; never substitute shell introspection or hand-editing of config files for the CLI commands documented there.

Why this order: Foundation establishes constraints (determinism, immutability, State Layer boundaries) that all work must respect.

Core Constraints (Summary)

Full constraints in docs/foundation/agent_instructions_rules.mdc and .Codex/rules/. Summary:

MUST enforce:

State Layer boundaries: No strategy, execution, or inference logic in Neotoma; operational concerns live in the operational layer(s) above
Determinism: No random IDs, no unstable sorting, hash-based entity/event IDs
Immutability: Observations and source are immutable (reinterpretation creates NEW observations)
Schema-first: Use application types from docs/subsystems/record_types.md
Explicit control: User approves all ingestion; no background scanning
Provenance: All outputs trace to source + config + timestamp
Graph integrity: No orphans, no cycles, transactional writes
Privacy: No PII in logs (IDs only)

Read the full file on GitHub · 107 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.

2mo ago Changed · +11 lines · +471 tokens per session 54056e2c6aed
2mo ago First seen · 96 lines · 1,462 tokens per session scan A 9844f92f1913

Subscribe to this mod's changes

neotoma AGENTS.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository markmhendrickson/neotoma (36 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 1,933 tokens to every session, about $0.0077 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 2026-09-03.

Project management ai-agents entity-resolution event-sourcing mcp privacy-first provenance

neotoma AGENTS.md next to 6 instructions from other repositories
Mod	Type	Stars	Last push	Licence	Scan	Tokens	Works with
neotoma AGENTS.mdmarkmhendrickson/neotoma	Instructions file	36	today	MIT	A	1,933	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	today	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

neotoma: Instructions file for Codex