Borrowing it
Nothing to install: this file belongs to oliver-zehentleitner/keep-the-why. 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/oliver-zehentleitner/keep-the-why/main/AGENTS.mdgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/oliver-zehentleitner/keep-the-whyWrote 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/oliver-zehentleitner/keep-the-why/agents-md)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/instructions/oliver-zehentleitner/keep-the-why/agents-md"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/oliver-zehentleitner/keep-the-why/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/oliver-zehentleitner/keep-the-why/agents-md"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/oliver-zehentleitner/keep-the-why/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 | $0.00239 | $0.00239 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00120 | $0.00120 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00048 | $0.00048 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00024 | $0.00024 |
Grade A, and why
keep-the-why 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 6d 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.
What it actually says
AGENTS.md
This project uses Keep the Why (itself) to preserve the reasoning behind its own code.
- Usage docs: see
docs/(or https://keepthewhy.com) - Why things are the way they are: see
context/index.md - If
AGENTS.local.mdexists in this checkout, read that too — personal/local notes, not committed.
Read context/index.md before making non-trivial changes — naming, docs
tooling, and repo structure have already been argued through once; check
there before re-litigating or accidentally reverting a decision.
Keep the Why's config for this project migrated to .keep-the-why on 2026-09-01 — requires skill version 0.10.0 or later to read it.
Working conventions (no why needed, just follow these)
CHANGELOG.md: one### Added/### Changed/### Fixedheading per category under[Unreleased]— reuse an existing one instead of opening a new one for the same category. Entries within a category, alphabetically ordered by first word, not insertion order.
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.
- 6d ago Changed · -5 lines · -16 tokens per session 89b7d3900db8
- 10d ago First seen · 24 lines · 255 tokens per session scan A 34389f2b926a
keep-the-why AGENTS.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository oliver-zehentleitner/keep-the-why (155 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 239 tokens to every session, about $0.0012 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
repobrain copilot-instructions.md
Copilot instructions for study8677/repobrain, covering github copilot bootstrap instructions and hard rule — query the repobrain hub first.
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.
codex AGENTS.md
AGENTS.md instructions for openai/codex, covering rust/codex-rs, the codex-core crate, code review rules, crate api surface and model visible context.
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).
vscode oss-third-party-notices.instructions.md
Instructions for microsoft/vscode, covering vs code oss third-party-notices pipeline, architecture, pipeline flow in ci, applying the notice (cutover) and fallback chain (never fail the build).
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.