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.
npx agentmods add instructions/microsoft/apm/encodinggit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/microsoft/apmWhat 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 | $0.00369 | $0.00369 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00185 | $0.00185 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00074 | $0.00074 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00037 | $0.00037 |
Grade A, and why
apm encoding.instructions.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 yesterday.
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.
What it actually says
Encoding Rules
Constraint
All source code files and CLI output strings must stay within printable ASCII (U+0020–U+007E).
Do NOT use:
- Emojis (e.g.
🚀,✨,❌) - Unicode box-drawing characters (e.g.
─,│,┌) - Em dashes (
—), en dashes (–), curly quotes (",",',') - Any character outside the ASCII range (codepoint > U+007E)
Why: Windows cp1252 terminals raise UnicodeEncodeError: 'charmap' codec can't encode character for any character outside cp1252. Keeping output within ASCII guarantees identical behaviour on every platform without dual-path fallback logic.
Status symbol convention
Use ASCII bracket notation consistently across all CLI output, help text, and log messages:
| Symbol | Meaning |
|---|---|
[+] |
success / confirmed |
[!] |
warning |
[x] |
error |
[i] |
info |
[*] |
action / processing |
[>] |
running / progress |
These map directly to the STATUS_SYMBOLS dict in src/apm_cli/utils/console.py.
Scope
This rule applies to:
- Python source files (
*.py) - CLI help strings and command output
- Markdown documentation and instruction files under
.github/ - Shell scripts and CI workflow files
Exception: binary assets and third-party vendored files are excluded.
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.
- yesterday First seen · 44 lines · 369 tokens per session scan A 93db7377dc89
apm encoding.instructions.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository microsoft/apm (3,668 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 369 tokens to every session, about $0.0018 per session on Opus 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.
Other instructions, from other repositories
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Instructions for narumiruna/aru, covering repository guidance, scope and authority, communication & documentation, code style and project map.
skillport AGENTS.md
Instructions for gotalab/skillport, covering agent guidelines & context, 1. core principles (10-second recall), 2. project context, architecture and directory structure.
odin-codex-plugin AGENTS.md
Instructions for OutlineDriven/odin-codex-plugin, covering codex coding agent adherences, token-efficient cli output, tool hierarchy, core system & file ops and search & discovery.
copilot-setting AGENTS.md
AGENTS.md instructions for zexion7873/copilot-setting, covering copilot-setting — agent guide, communication language, repository purpose, validation commands and architecture.
loadout reactjs.instructions.md
ReactJS Engineering Instructions.
loadout tauri.instructions.md
Tauri Engineering Instructions.