NewsBlur is a personal RSS news reader and social network that displays stories, the original sites they come from, and tools for filtering and discussing them. Readers use it to follow subscriptions, train story preferences, search and tag articles, share reading, and optionally self-host the service. The catalogue entries provide commands, skills, instructions, hooks, and settings for working with the NewsBlur project.
Borrowing it
Nothing to install: this file belongs to samuelclay/NewsBlur. 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/samuelclay/NewsBlur/main/AGENTS.mdgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/samuelclay/NewsBlurWrote 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/samuelclay/newsblur/agents-md)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/instructions/samuelclay/newsblur/agents-md"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/samuelclay/newsblur/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/samuelclay/newsblur/agents-md"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/samuelclay/newsblur/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 | $0.07140 | $0.07140 |
| Opus 5.5 | $0.02856 | $0.02856 |
| Sonnet 5.5 | $0.01428 | $0.01428 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00714 | $0.00714 |
Grade A, and why
NewsBlur 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.
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 420 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
NewsBlur Development Guidelines
Planning & Clarification
IMPORTANT: Before starting any implementation or creating a plan, ask clarifying questions using the AskUserQuestion tool (not plain text). Always use the AskUserQuestion tool in Claude Code when you have questions to ask after a prompt. Use it to understand:
- The specific goals and desired outcomes
- Edge cases and error handling preferences
- UI/UX preferences (if applicable)
- Performance or scalability requirements
- Integration points with existing code
- Testing expectations
- Any constraints or preferences I might have
Codex: Use the request_user_input tool frequently throughout development - not just during planning.
Claude Code: Always use the AskUserQuestion tool (not plain text questions) when you need to ask the user something - during planning, implementation, and any other time.
Actively interview the user at any point (especially during planning). Prefer multiple rounds of short questions.
Asking questions is encouraged and appreciated because it:
- Helps both of us think through problems more clearly
- Surfaces edge cases and requirements that might be missed
- Leads to better solutions through collaborative dialogue
- Catches misunderstandings early before code is written
Ask about:
- Clarifying requirements and desired behavior
- UI/UX preferences and design decisions
- Trade-offs between different approaches
- Edge cases and error handling
- Whether a proposed solution matches expectations
- Anything you're uncertain about
Don't assume - ask. Multiple rounds of questions are better than one large batch. Even mid-implementation, if something feels unclear or you're choosing between options, ask. The interactive back-and-forth is valuable.
Debugging
For debugging sessions: always take a screenshot first, reproduce the issue, then form a hypothesis before changing code. Do not start editing until the root cause is identified.
Bug Fixing Workflow
When I report a bug, don't start by trying to fix it. Instead, start by writing a test that reproduces the bug. Then, have subagents try to fix the bug and prove it with a passing test.
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.
- 8d ago Changed · +3 lines · +154 tokens per session d78983bdff02
- 15d ago Changed · +4 lines · +125 tokens per session 9c16ef942aed
- 21d ago Changed · +22 lines · +897 tokens per session 6193a43a21eb
- 1mo ago Changed · +7 lines · +143 tokens per session 7cd5a6fe16ef
- 1mo ago Changed · +1 lines · +111 tokens per session 5eb49807ef83
- 2mo ago First seen · 383 lines · 5,710 tokens per session scan A e2ba4dcc520e
NewsBlur AGENTS.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository samuelclay/NewsBlur (7,680 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 7,140 tokens to every session, about $0.0286 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.
NewsBlur AGENTS.md compared with instructions from other repositories
| Mod | Type | Stars | Last push | Licence | Scan | Tokens | Works with |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NewsBlur AGENTS.mdsamuelclay/NewsBlur | Instructions file | 7.7k | yesterday | MIT | A | 7,140 | 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 | today | 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 |