norns AGENTS.md

A project guide for Norns, an open-source system that runs and tracks tasks handled by software agents. It documents the Elixir technology stack, commands, and code layout.

In plain words
What is it for?
Understanding and changing the Norns codebase, running its tests, applying database migrations, and locating its main components.
Why use it?
It gives coding agents the project context needed to work consistently, including how to run tests and database migrations in Docker.

Instructions file for CodexOpenCode

Install

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.

agentmods
npx agentmods add instructions/nornscode/norns/agents-md
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/nornscode/norns

Made for: Codex, OpenCode.

Per session 1,274 This file is loaded in full into every session.
When invoked 1,274 The same file — it is already loaded in full.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
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.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.01274 $0.01274
Opus 5 $0.00637 $0.00637
Sonnet 5 $0.00255 $0.00255
Haiku 4.5 $0.00127 $0.00127

Measured 2d ago against content hash 633dea283237, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

norns 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 2d 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.

Origin

Copies of this mod

1 near-identical copy found in the catalogue:

AGENTS.md · 102 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 102 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Norns

Project Overview

Open-source (MIT) durable agent runtime on BEAM. The orchestrator is a pure state machine — it dispatches tasks to workers and persists events, but never executes LLM calls or tools directly.

Tech Stack

  • Language: Elixir on BEAM/OTP
  • Web Framework: Phoenix (REST + Channels + LiveView)
  • Database: PostgreSQL via Ecto
  • Background Jobs: Oban
  • Dev Environment: Docker Compose (all mix commands run in containers)
  • License: MIT

Running Commands

docker compose run --rm -e POSTGRES_HOST=db app mix test
docker compose run --rm -e POSTGRES_HOST=db app mix ecto.migrate
docker compose run --rm -e MIX_ENV=test -e POSTGRES_HOST=db app mix test

Project Structure

lib/norns/
  tenants/          — Tenant schema + context (multi-tenancy)
  agents/           — Agent, AgentDef, Process (state machine), Registry
  conversations/    — Conversation schema + context (persistent chat history)
  runs/             — Run + RunEvent schemas, Runs context (event log)
  runtime/          — Event contracts, error taxonomy, retry policy
  gards/            — Gard + GardPort schemas; Gards context (worker affinity)
  hooks/            — Hook schema, Signature verification; Hooks context (webhook ingress)
  triggers/         — Trigger schema + context (cron schedules that start runs)
  workers/          — WorkerRegistry, TaskQueue, ResumeAgents, TriggerScheduler
  llm.ex            — LLM dispatcher (used by workers via Fake in tests)
  llm/              — Behaviour, Anthropic adapter, Format (neutral ↔ Anthropic), Fake
  tools/            — Behaviour, Tool struct, Executor, Registry, Idempotency

lib/norns_web/
  endpoint.ex       — Phoenix endpoint (REST + WebSocket + LiveView)
  router.ex         — API routes + LiveView routes
  plugs/            — Auth (API bearer token), SessionAuth (browser cookies)
  controllers/      — AgentController, RunController, ConversationController
  channels/         — AgentSocket/Channel (streaming), WorkerSocket/Channel (task dispatch)
  live/             — AgentsLive, AgentLive, RunLive, ToolsLive, SetupLive
  components/       — Layouts (root + app)
  json.ex           — Serialization helpers

Read the full file on GitHub · 102 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.

  1. 2d ago First seen · 102 lines · 1,274 tokens per session scan A 633dea283237

Subscribe to this mod's changes

norns AGENTS.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository nornscode/norns (11 stars, last pushed 16d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 1,274 tokens to every session, about $0.0064 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.

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