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.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" 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 | $0.05710 | $0.05710 |
| Opus 5 | $0.02855 | $0.02855 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.01142 | $0.01142 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00571 | $0.00571 |
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 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.
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 383 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.
- 6d 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 (7,608 stars, last pushed 3d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 5,710 tokens to every session, about $0.0285 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
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.
spec-kit AGENTS.md
AGENTS.md instructions for github/spec-kit, covering agents.md, about spec kit and specify, quickstart — add a new integration in 5 steps, integration architecture and integrationmanifest — file tracking.