swarm-mcp-server: Instructions file for Codex

AGENTS.md

swarm-mcp-server AGENTS.md is an instructions file for Codex, OpenCode from Northern-Lighthouse/swarm-mcp-server. It costs 608 tokens per session, scanned A, original, MIT.

Instructions for AI agents working in a swarm, meaning a group of agents that share tasks, messages, and a knowledge base.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use them when connecting to a swarm MCP server: register the agent, report that it is alive, claim available tasks, update progress, and finish or fail claimed tasks properly.
Why use it?
They define registration, heartbeats, task claiming, status updates, and task completion so agents do not duplicate work or leave tasks blocked.

Instructions file for CodexOpenCode

Written for Codex and OpenCode: the file is AGENTS.md. Also seen: mentions AGENTS.md.

This is Northern-Lighthouse/swarm-mcp-server's own configuration. It tells Codex and OpenCode how to work on swarm-mcp-server itself, so it is not a mod to install elsewhere. Copy it as a starting point and replace the rules that are about this project. Everything swarm-mcp-server configures →

Reuse

Borrowing it

Nothing to install: this file belongs to Northern-Lighthouse/swarm-mcp-server. 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/Northern-Lighthouse/swarm-mcp-server/main/AGENTS.md
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Northern-Lighthouse/swarm-mcp-server

Made for: Codex, OpenCode.

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Per session 608 This file is loaded in full into every session.
When invoked 608 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.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00608 $0.00608
Opus 5 $0.00304 $0.00304
Sonnet 5 $0.00122 $0.00122
Haiku 4.5 $0.00061 $0.00061

Measured 8d ago against content hash 4c9aa0148c75, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-08, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

swarm-mcp-server 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 8d 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 · 43 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 43 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

AGENTS.md - behaving well on the swarm bus

This file is for AI agents connected to a swarm-mcp-server instance. It defines the etiquette that keeps a multi-agent swarm coherent; the human-facing setup doc is README.md, and examples/agent-prompt.md has a fuller prompt you can adapt.

Lifecycle

  1. Register once at startup: agent_register with a stable agent_id, a human-readable display_name, and honest capabilities. Re-registering with the same id after a restart is fine.
  2. Heartbeat every 15-20 seconds with agent_heartbeat while you are alive. Agents silent past the timeout (default 30 s) are treated as offline; do not build on the assumption that a stale agent will return.
  3. Deregister (agent_deregister) when your task ends cleanly.

Working the task queue

  • Claim before you work. task_get_available, then task_claim - the claim is atomic, so a successful claim means the task is yours; a failed claim means someone else got it, move on without retrying the same task.
  • Update status honestly with task_update_status as you progress, and always terminate a claimed task (completed or failed with a reason) - an abandoned claim blocks everyone downstream.
  • Respect dependencies: a task listed as available has its dependencies met; do not start work on tasks you merely see in task_list.

Messaging

  • message_send for one recipient, message_broadcast for everyone; poll with message_poll on your own cadence (heartbeat time is a natural moment).
  • Mark what you have handled (message_mark_read) so conversation state stays meaningful.
  • Keep messages operational: what you did, what you need, what changed. Put durable findings in the knowledge base instead.

Knowledge base

  • knowledge_store findings other agents will need (decisions, gotchas, interface contracts), with searchable titles.
  • Search before you re-derive: knowledge_search (keyword) or knowledge_semantic_search (vector, when the host runs embeddings).

Read the full file on GitHub · 43 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. 8d ago First seen · 43 lines · 608 tokens per session scan A 4c9aa0148c75

Subscribe to this mod's changes

swarm-mcp-server AGENTS.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository Northern-Lighthouse/swarm-mcp-server (0 stars, last pushed 25d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 608 tokens to every session, about $0.0030 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 2026-08-31.

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