What is dotdog AGENTS.md?

A project guide for the dotdog command-line tool, explaining how agents should query its machine-readable specification graph and verify code changes.

Use it when exploring dotdog entities and relationships, changing dotdog source, updating specifications, or running targeted and full tests.

It prevents agents from reading or editing the human-format specification directly and keeps changes tied to the project’s source of truth.

How specdog/dotdog configures Codex and OpenCode

Reuse

Borrowing it

Nothing to install: this file belongs to specdog/dotdog. 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/specdog/dotdog/main/AGENTS.md

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/specdog/dotdog

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/specdog/dotdog/agents-md/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/instructions/specdog/dotdog/agents-md)

Your own site

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

Per session 526 This file is loaded in full into every session.

When invoked 526 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	$0.00526	$0.00526
Opus 5.5	$0.00210	$0.00210
Sonnet 5.5	$0.00105	$0.00105
Haiku 4.5	$0.00053	$0.00053

Measured 6d ago against content hash fd71020d655d, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

dotdog 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.

AGENTS.md · 50 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 50 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

AGENTS.md — dotdog

This repo is the dotdog CLI tool. For spec graphs, use npx dotdog serve (MCP) or dotdog compile.

Quick Start (read this first)

NEVER read .dog files directly. Query the .dag via MCP. The .dog is human format. The .dag is agent format.

.md: read for context (README, docs, blog) but NOT for entity/relationship/project structure
.dog: NEVER read. Human writes it. Agent never touches it.
.dag: ALWAYS query via MCP. This is your source of truth for project structure.
If .dag doesn't have it: report "unverified" — never fall back to .dog

MCP: npx dotdog serve (11 tools: getEntity, traverse, path, search, schema, summary, listProjects, workspace.list, context, impact, infraVerify)

Workflow (lean):

1 issue → 1 PR → 1 merge
spec/.dag first, code second
no unrelated edits
verify with targeted test, then full bun test
update docs/spec in the same PR if behavior changes
never merge without explicit user ask

Token efficiency:

keep truth in .dag/spec, not chat
preserve IDs, file paths, and test results verbatim
compress chatter/logs, not constraints or state
prefer short status: changed / verified / next

Public site/docs: keep README, docs, and specdog.github.io in sync when adding commands, docs, blog posts, or discovery pages.

Commands (when modifying dotdog source)

dotdog validate     → check completeness (run before commits)
dotdog doctor       → baseline health check (run before commits)
dotdog analyze      → gap detection + contradiction checking
dotdog compile      → rebuild .dag from .dog files
dotdog index        → build search index
dotdog search "q"   → lexical search across indexed sections
dotdog status       → read-only graph freshness (not correctness)

Key Rules

Use conventional commits (feat:, fix:, docs:, chore:)
Never commit dist/
Keep the first unreleased 1.0 candidate at 1.0.0; bump versions per release, not per development commit
Dogfood: test against npx dotdog@latest validate before shipping

Read the full file on GitHub · 50 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.

6d ago Changed · +17 tokens per session fd71020d655d
2mo ago First seen · 50 lines · 509 tokens per session scan A 61322e71c825

Subscribe to this mod's changes

dotdog AGENTS.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository specdog/dotdog (7 stars, last pushed 6d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 526 tokens to every session, about $0.0021 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 2026-08-31.

Building agents ai cli dogfood dotdog spec specification

dotdog AGENTS.md next to 6 instructions from other repositories
Mod	Type	Stars	Last push	Licence	Scan	Tokens	Works with
dotdog AGENTS.mdspecdog/dotdog	Instructions file	7	6d ago	MIT	A	526	Codex, OpenCode
vscode buildNext.instructions.mdmicrosoft/vscode	Instructions file	195k	today	MIT	A	9,719	GitHub Copilot
next.js AGENTS.mdvercel/next.js	Instructions file	143k	yesterday	MIT	A	7,461	Codex, OpenCode
langchain AGENTS.mdlangchain-ai/langchain	Instructions file	149k	today	MIT	A	4,680	Codex, OpenCode
vscode oss-third-party-notices.instructions.mdmicrosoft/vscode	Instructions file	195k	today	MIT	A	5,516	GitHub Copilot
vscode copilot-instructions.mdmicrosoft/vscode	Instructions file	195k	today	MIT	A	3,093	GitHub Copilot
deepseek-harness AGENTS.mddeepseek-ai/deepseek-harness	Instructions file	275k	2d ago	MIT	A	4,313	Codex, OpenCode

dotdog: Instructions file for Codex