openclaw/acpx is a headless command-line client for the Agent Client Protocol, a standard interface for communicating with compatible coding agents. Agents, orchestrators, and developers use it to manage persistent or one-off sessions, permissions, and machine-readable output across tools such as Codex, Claude Code, Gemini CLI, and OpenClaw, with the catalogue containing agents and instructions for those workflows.
Borrowing it
Nothing to install: this file belongs to openclaw/acpx. 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/openclaw/acpx/main/AGENTS.mdgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/openclaw/acpxWrote 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/openclaw/acpx/agents-md)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/instructions/openclaw/acpx/agents-md"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/openclaw/acpx/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/openclaw/acpx/agents-md"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/openclaw/acpx/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 | $0.04244 | $0.04244 |
| Opus 5.5 | $0.01698 | $0.01698 |
| Sonnet 5.5 | $0.00849 | $0.00849 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00424 | $0.00424 |
Grade A, and why
acpx 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 12d 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 — 347 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
AGENTS.md — acpx
Purpose
This file is for contributors and coding agents working in this repository.
Keep it focused on how to develop, validate, and ship acpx.
Use these files for the other concerns:
README.mdfor user-facing install and usagedocs/CLI.mdfor CLI referenceVISION.mdfor product direction and boundariesCONTRIBUTING.mdfor PR expectationsskills/acpx/SKILL.mdfor agent-usage guidance
When you need implementation detail, prefer the in-repo references below instead of expanding this file into a full technical spec.
Repo
- GitHub:
https://github.com/openclaw/acpx - npm:
https://www.npmjs.com/package/acpx - Default branch:
main - Runtime: Node.js
>=22.13.0 - Source builds: Node.js
^22.22.1 || ^24.11.0 || >=26.0.0(lint-staged sets the Node 22 minimum; tsdown excludes Node 25). - Package manager:
[email protected](CI reads the pin frompackage.json). - Clean Node 22 setups can have stale Corepack signing keys; install pnpm
with
npm install -g [email protected]ifcorepack preparefails.
Product Direction
acpxshould be the smallest useful ACP client: a lightweight CLI that lets one agent talk to another agent through the Agent Client Protocol without PTY scraping or adapter-specific glue.- The goal is not to build a giant orchestration layer. The goal is to make ACP practical, robust, and easy to compose in real workflows.
- The primary user is another agent, orchestrator, or harness. Human usability still matters, but it is a secondary constraint.
acpxshould not try to do too many things at once.- If a feature does not make
acpxa better ACP client or backend, it probably does not belong in core. - In
acpx, data models, config keys, keywords, flags, output shapes, and naming conventions are part of the product surface. - They should be scrutinized multiple times before being added or changed. Convenience is not enough. Every new convention creates long-term compatibility cost.
- The default stance should be to add fewer conventions, make them clearer, and keep them stable.
- Read
VISION.mdbefore changing user-visible behavior or conventions.
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.
- 12d ago Changed · +4 lines · +66 tokens per session f06c3eedded7
- 22d ago Changed · -4 lines · -66 tokens per session aa22676ea3cf
- 1mo ago Changed · +7 lines · +116 tokens per session 8a70b79b4aa0
- 1mo ago Changed b6a82de29c91
- 1mo ago Changed · +4 lines · +55 tokens per session 18190d0d2bf5
- 1mo ago Changed · -4 tokens per session cae5a87e8179
- 1mo ago Changed · +2 lines · +67 tokens per session 5876ac1affab
- 1mo ago Changed e75cc2d76b5e
- 1mo ago Changed · +1 lines · +34 tokens per session f5c486ae29b1
- 1mo ago First seen · 333 lines · 3,976 tokens per session scan A 2b4b95c411ac
acpx AGENTS.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository openclaw/acpx (3,396 stars, last pushed 2d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 4,244 tokens to every session, about $0.0170 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).
deepseek-harness AGENTS.md
AGENTS.md instructions for deepseek-ai/deepseek-harness, covering agents.md, pre-stable apis and released session data, repository layout, commands and host sandbox failures.