Borrowing it
Nothing to install: this file belongs to nexus-substrate/nexus-agents. 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/nexus-substrate/nexus-agents/main/AGENTS.mdgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/nexus-substrate/nexus-agentsWrote 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/nexus-substrate/nexus-agents/agents-md)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/instructions/nexus-substrate/nexus-agents/agents-md"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/nexus-substrate/nexus-agents/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/nexus-substrate/nexus-agents/agents-md"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/nexus-substrate/nexus-agents/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 | $0.15463 | $0.15463 |
| Opus 5.5 | $0.06185 | $0.06185 |
| Sonnet 5.5 | $0.03093 | $0.03093 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.01546 | $0.01546 |
Grade A, and why
nexus-agents 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 19d 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 — 653 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
AGENTS.md — nexus-agents
Standalone guidance for AI coding agents (OpenCode, Codex CLI, Cursor, Aider, Cline, Continue, Goose, Claude Code) working in this repo. Self-contained — no required redirect to other files.
About this project: Nexus-agents is a governance substrate for AI coding agents — adversarial PR review, drift-detected charter, tamper-evident append-only audit chain (threat model: tamper-evident, not tamper-proof), closed-loop telemetry. The agents you (the reader) belong to are exactly the kind of agent nexus-agents governs. Rules in .rules/ are enforced by CI gates and PR-review voters, not just suggestions.
Canonical surface. This file is the single source of truth for agent guidance in this repo (per #2805's option-B federation). Every other harness config (
.cursor/rules/,.windsurf/rules/,.aider.conf.yml,.continue/rules/,.clinerules/) is a one-line redirect to this file — never duplicated content. PRs that duplicate content here into a harness-specific file get refactored to redirects before merge. See docs/architecture/AGENT_COMPATIBILITY.md for the full federation rationale.Claude Code users: the legacy entry point at CLAUDE.md is still authoritative for Claude-Code-specific integrations (auto-loaded rules, plugin marketplace). The content below is the harness-neutral subset.
Mission
Nexus-agents is a self-improving autonomous engine for an organization's technical work, built to extend toward its broader functions over time. It runs the engineering lifecycle end to end — form/refine intent → research → plan (agile PM: epics → child issues) → develop (multi-CLI) → adversarial-consensus review → QA + security gates → measure outcomes → self-tune. The routing/strategy self-improvement loop is wired and default-on (outcome telemetry → strategy distillation → bounded routing adjustment, enforce-by-default since v2.96). Coding was the deliberate bootstrap: build an engine good enough to extend itself to the remaining functions and keep improving how it works.
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.
- 19d ago Changed · +9 tokens per session 723c041d9262
- 20d ago Changed · -1 lines · -87 tokens per session f0cc9303e48a
- 21d ago Changed · +39 lines · +711 tokens per session ec12729470b1
- 1mo ago Changed · +20 tokens per session ee9cd1b7f020
- 1mo ago Changed · +51 tokens per session fe2ad7926084
- 1mo ago Changed · +1 lines · +234 tokens per session 21f90c82f1a8
- 1mo ago Changed · +215 tokens per session 5bebbf6c1863
- 1mo ago Changed · +162 tokens per session 9abad50eaa9e
- 1mo ago Changed · +89 lines · +1,184 tokens per session cc89d663848d
- 1mo ago First seen · 525 lines · 12,964 tokens per session scan A 7bddc5bdcc54
nexus-agents AGENTS.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository nexus-substrate/nexus-agents (23 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 15,463 tokens to every session, about $0.0619 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.
Other instructions, from other repositories
vscode buildNext.instructions.md
Working notes and architecture documentation for the new esbuild-based build system in build/next. Use when making changes to the new build pipeline (transpile/bundle commands, NLS plugin, source-map handling, resource copying, or self-hosting watch tasks).
next.js AGENTS.md
AGENTS.md instructions for vercel/next.js, covering next.js development guide, codebase structure, monorepo overview, core package: packages/next and other important packages.
vscode oss-third-party-notices.instructions.md
Instructions for microsoft/vscode, covering vs code oss third-party-notices pipeline, architecture, pipeline flow in ci, cache eligibility and rollout and applying the notice (cutover).
langchain AGENTS.md
AGENTS.md instructions for langchain-ai/langchain, covering global development guidelines for the langchain monorepo, corridor security analysis, project architecture and context, monorepo structure and development tools & commands.
vscode copilot-instructions.md
Copilot instructions for microsoft/vscode, covering vs code copilot instructions, project overview, root folders, core architecture (src/ folder) and built-in extensions (extensions/ folder).
deno copilot-instructions.md
Copilot instructions for denoland/deno, covering deno development guide for github copilot, network access, high level overview, key directories and key files to understand first.