What is pairwith AGENTS.md?

A set of instructions for pairwith, an open-source command-line tool that applies communication and coding-style profiles to AI assistants. It also defines rules for contributing profiles and changing the tool.

Working on the pairwith command-line tool, reviewing style profiles, planning changes, and following its test-first contribution process.

It keeps work small and predictable, protects against impersonating real people, and requires tests before implementing most issue fixes.

How merencia/pairwith configures Codex and OpenCode

Reuse

Borrowing it

Nothing to install: this file belongs to merencia/pairwith. 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/merencia/pairwith/main/AGENTS.md

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/merencia/pairwith

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/merencia/pairwith/agents-md/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/instructions/merencia/pairwith/agents-md)

Your own site

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

Per session 686 This file is loaded in full into every session.

When invoked 686 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	$0.00686	$0.00686
Opus 5.5	$0.00274	$0.00274
Sonnet 5.5	$0.00137	$0.00137
Haiku 4.5	$0.00069	$0.00069

Measured 2mo ago against content hash 0304de651908, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

pairwith 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 · 56 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 56 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

AGENTS.md

Ground rules for any agent (or human) working in this repo. Read this before editing anything.

What this repo is

An open-source CLI (pairwith) plus a registry of developer style profiles — Markdown files that shape how an AI coding assistant communicates, reasons about trade-offs, and frames feedback. A profile is inspired by publicly observable aspects of a specific developer's technical work. It is not the real person and does not represent them.

The CLI is infrastructure: it must be small, predictable, and safe.
Profiles are community content: they must pass quality, consent, and non-impersonation checks. See PROFILE_POLICY.md and DISCLAIMER.md.

Pair programming rules

Don't edit code without explicit confirmation.
Before acting, state briefly what will change, where, and why.
Work in small steps. Don't make changes outside the requested scope.
Ask when genuinely unsure. Don't guess at contracts (command names, flags, output format).

Test-first when there's an issue

When working from an issue: write the tests first, open a draft PR with just the tests, get alignment, then implement. Skip this flow for trivial changes.

CLI UX (non-negotiable)

Success output → stdout. Errors and progress → stderr.
Exit 0 on success, 1 on user error (bad input, not found), 2 on unexpected error.
User errors get a clear, actionable message. No stack traces unless --verbose.
--help is authoritative documentation — keep it current.
Respect NO_COLOR. Don't assume Unicode support.

Safety

A profile is a prompt. The CLI never executes profile content — it only writes files.
By default, only write under ~/.claude/agents/, ~/.claude/skills/, ~/.copilot/agents/, ~/.copilot/skills/, or ~/.cursor/rules/, unless the user passes --path explicitly.
Never overwrite an existing file without confirmation, unless --force.
Every network call has a timeout and a size limit. Sanitize any handle/URL before using it.
Never log tokens, credentials, or third-party transcript content.

Read the full file on GitHub · 56 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 First seen · 56 lines · 686 tokens per session scan A 0304de651908

Subscribe to this mod's changes

pairwith AGENTS.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository merencia/pairwith (7 stars, last pushed 6mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 686 tokens to every session, about $0.0027 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 2026-08-31.

pairwith AGENTS.md next to 6 instructions from other repositories
Mod	Type	Stars	Last push	Licence	Scan	Tokens	Works with
pairwith AGENTS.mdmerencia/pairwith	Instructions file	7	6mo ago	MIT	A	686	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	yesterday	MIT	A	7,461	Codex, OpenCode
langchain AGENTS.mdlangchain-ai/langchain	Instructions file	149k	today	MIT	A	4,680	Codex, OpenCode
vscode oss-third-party-notices.instructions.mdmicrosoft/vscode	Instructions file	195k	today	MIT	A	5,516	GitHub Copilot
vscode copilot-instructions.mdmicrosoft/vscode	Instructions file	195k	today	MIT	A	3,093	GitHub Copilot
deepseek-harness AGENTS.mddeepseek-ai/deepseek-harness	Instructions file	275k	2d ago	MIT	A	4,313	Codex, OpenCode

pairwith: Instructions file for Codex