What is Dystil AGENTS.md?

Repository guidance for Dystil, a local desktop app that finds repeated work and turns it into reusable instructions. It also explains which project documents can be trusted when they disagree.

Use it when working on Dystil code or documentation, checking whether a claim matches the source code, or learning how its work-discovery loop is meant to operate.

It prevents agents from relying on outdated documentation and helps them understand the app's purpose before making changes.

How Second-Order-Systems/Dystil configures Codex and OpenCode

Reuse

Borrowing it

Nothing to install: this file belongs to Second-Order-Systems/Dystil. 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/Second-Order-Systems/Dystil/main/AGENTS.md

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Second-Order-Systems/Dystil

Made for: Codex, OpenCode.

Wrote 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.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/second-order-systems/dystil/agents-md/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/instructions/second-order-systems/dystil/agents-md)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/instructions/second-order-systems/dystil/agents-md"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/second-order-systems/dystil/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.

Your own site · 80×15

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/instructions/second-order-systems/dystil/agents-md"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/second-order-systems/dystil/agents-md.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>

Per session 1,950 This file is loaded in full into every session.

When invoked 1,950 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.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5.1	$0.01950	$0.01950
Opus 5.5	$0.00780	$0.00780
Sonnet 5.5	$0.00390	$0.00390
Haiku 4.5	$0.00195	$0.00195

Measured 2mo ago against content hash dbd9b0193694, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

Dystil 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 2mo 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 · 184 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 184 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

AGENTS.md

Instructions for coding agents working in this repository. Humans are welcome to read it too — it is the fastest orientation available.

What Dystil is

A local-first desktop app that observes how you work, identifies work that repeats, and produces reusable instructions that can do that work again. The user-facing loop is Worth fixing (repetitive work found, with evidence) → Ask for fix (the user clarifies) → Ready to use (kept, reusable artifacts).

It is not a note-taking app, a day planner, or a chatbot over your history.

Source of truth — read this before trusting any document

Precedence, highest first:

The code. Always wins.
agent_docs/ — verified against the code, and every factual claim carries a citation. Trust it, but if a citation no longer resolves, the document is wrong; fix it or file it.
Everything else — public_docs/, README.md, marketing copy.

public_docs/ is positioning, not specification. It describes what Dystil is for and where it is going, and it is deliberately allowed to run ahead of the code. It may use explanatory concepts (for example "work cards") that do not correspond to any type in the codebase.

Never implement from public_docs/.
Never cite it in review.
Never treat a capability named there as existing.

If narrative and engineering disagree, engineering is right. If engineering and the code disagree, the code is right — and the document is a bug.

Why this exists: an earlier docs/TECHNICAL_ARCHITECTURE.md confidently described a bundled llama.cpp runtime, named models, fixed ports, embeddings, and vector search. None of it existed. It read exactly like a real engineering reference, and it propagated into the README. Assume any uncited document is capable of the same.

Writing docs

A claim in agent_docs/ needs a citation: path + symbol name or a short verbatim quote. Never path:line — line numbers drift and break the check. Good: app_config.rs :: telemetry_endpoint() or Cargo.toml — `enterprise-client = ["cloud-sync", "official-build"]`
public_docs/ must contain no falsifiable specifics — no ports, model names, schemas, crate names, file paths, or sizes. If it can be wrong, it belongs in agent_docs/.
Every doc carries a status: in its frontmatter. Three values:

Read the full file on GitHub · 184 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.

2mo ago First seen · 184 lines · 1,950 tokens per session scan A dbd9b0193694

Subscribe to this mod's changes

Dystil AGENTS.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository Second-Order-Systems/Dystil (27 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 1,950 tokens to every session, about $0.0078 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.

Dystil AGENTS.md next to 6 instructions from other repositories
Mod	Type	Stars	Last push	Licence	Scan	Tokens	Works with
Dystil AGENTS.mdSecond-Order-Systems/Dystil	Instructions file	27	2mo ago	Apache-2.0	A	1,950	Codex, OpenCode
vscode buildNext.instructions.mdmicrosoft/vscode	Instructions file	195k	today	MIT	A	9,719	GitHub Copilot
vscode oss-third-party-notices.instructions.mdmicrosoft/vscode	Instructions file	195k	today	MIT	A	5,516	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	today	MIT	A	4,680	Codex, OpenCode
vscode copilot-instructions.mdmicrosoft/vscode	Instructions file	195k	today	MIT	A	3,093	GitHub Copilot
vscode model-prompts.instructions.mdmicrosoft/vscode	Instructions file	195k	today	MIT	A	2,022	GitHub Copilot

Dystil: Instructions file for Codex