What is handbook AGENTS.md?

A repository-wide instruction file for the Handbook project. It explains how coding agents should read, edit, communicate, plan, and verify work, with related files for other coding tools.

It guides repository maintenance, including finding the right files, understanding directory conventions, planning edits, and checking results before reporting them.

It gives contributors one shared set of working rules and helps prevent unsupported claims or inconsistent changes across the repository.

How nicograef/handbook configures Codex and OpenCode

Reuse

Borrowing it

Nothing to install: this file belongs to nicograef/handbook. 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/nicograef/handbook/main/AGENTS.md

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/nicograef/handbook

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/nicograef/handbook/agents-md/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/instructions/nicograef/handbook/agents-md)

Your own site

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

Per session 407 This file is loaded in full into every session.

When invoked 407 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	$0.00407	$0.00407
Opus 5.5	$0.00163	$0.00163
Sonnet 5.5	$0.00081	$0.00081
Haiku 4.5	$0.00041	$0.00041

Measured 25d ago against content hash f22cbdc08e67, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

handbook 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 25d 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 · 22 lines

What it actually says

Agents

Rules for maintaining this repo. Setting up a machine, project or server starts at the README Journeys. Communication and working rules: claude/global.md.

Read the target directory before editing and match its style. Per-directory conventions live in .claude/rules/.
Verify against the source before asserting anything about code, structure or behaviour.
For external tools and specs, read the official docs, not memory.
One source of truth: link to a template, script or doc instead of copying it.
README.md indexes every guide, reference page, template, dotfile and script, grouped by area. Update it after every add, remove or rename.
After renaming or deleting a file, grep -r '<filename>' . and fix every reference.
When a tool version changes, grep the repo and update every occurrence.
make check runs every repo self-check, the prose caps (sentence ≤ 20 words, paragraph ≤ 3 lines) and history words included; make help lists the stages.
English only. Markdown exceptions are LANG_ALLOW in scripts/check-repo.sh; elsewhere, umlaut key names in dotfiles/nvim/init.lua and the owner's name in claude/settings.json.
A multi-file change starts with docs/plans/plan-<slug>.md (goal, files, checklist), ticked as you go and deleted when done. A single-file edit skips the plan.

Layout

One document kind per folder.
claude/ is the global Claude Code config. .claude/ holds the repo rules and Stop hook.
plugin/ is the nico Claude Code plugin: shared skills, the web-researcher agent, hooks and their scripts.
scripts/install-dotfiles.sh --check lists every link install.sh creates in $HOME.

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.

25d ago Changed · +2 tokens per session f22cbdc08e67
28d ago Changed · -37 tokens per session 163c253a1cbe
1mo ago Changed · -11 lines · -171 tokens per session ac98d6bba10a
1mo ago Changed · +17 lines · +246 tokens per session be04c6a5e803
1mo ago Changed · +5 tokens per session ea0840cb8a4c
1mo ago Changed · -4 tokens per session e0c66527cb3c
1mo ago Changed · -77 lines · -865 tokens per session faa8aa4cbbb1
1mo ago Changed · -19 lines · -301 tokens per session c553239650b3
2mo ago Changed · -3 lines · +18 tokens per session c853f112e718
2mo ago First seen · 115 lines · 1,514 tokens per session scan A bbe1014208bf

Subscribe to this mod's changes

handbook AGENTS.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository nicograef/handbook (2 stars, last pushed 2d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 407 tokens to every session, about $0.0016 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.

handbook AGENTS.md next to 6 instructions from other repositories
Mod	Type	Stars	Last push	Licence	Scan	Tokens	Works with
handbook AGENTS.mdnicograef/handbook	Instructions file	2	2d ago	MIT	A	407	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	yesterday	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

handbook: Instructions file for Codex