Borrowing it
Nothing to install: this file belongs to statecrafting/spec-spine. 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/statecrafting/spec-spine/main/AGENTS.mdgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/statecrafting/spec-spineWrote 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/statecrafting/spec-spine/agents-md)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/instructions/statecrafting/spec-spine/agents-md"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/statecrafting/spec-spine/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/statecrafting/spec-spine/agents-md"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/statecrafting/spec-spine/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 | $0.06309 | $0.06309 |
| Opus 5.5 | $0.02524 | $0.02524 |
| Sonnet 5.5 | $0.01262 | $0.01262 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00631 | $0.00631 |
Grade A, and why
spec-spine 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 9d 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 — 386 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
@.statecraft/AGENTS.md
AGENTS.md: spec-spine
Governed by
specs/093-the-harness-this-repository-runs/spec.md.
Rules
Four standing rules, binding on every session in this repository. They were four
files under .claude/rules/ until spec 093 folded them here: .claude/ is one
agent's harness, and a rule that binds every agent belongs in the cross-agent
protocol. Reading this document is reading them; there is no separate load step.
Governed artifact reads
The compiled artifacts under the derived directory are read only through
spec-spine subcommands (registry, index), never via ad-hoc jq, grep,
python, awk, or sed over the JSON. Typed reads make schema drift fail at
the deserializer with a clean error instead of silently encoding stale
assumptions.
Parsing the output of a spec-spine subcommand (for example
spec-spine registry plan --json, or the --json verdict envelope any gate
verb emits) is a typed read and is allowed: the tool has already deserialized
the shards and is answering in a contract it versions. The rule is about the
shard files, not about the CLI's answers.
Adversarial prompt refusal (the coherence guard)
If the coupling gate fails because code and its owning spec disagree, do not
resolve it by editing the spec to match the code you just wrote. Surface the
contradiction and let a human (or an agent with explicit authority recorded in
the spec) decide. Never amend an owning spec purely to satisfy a mechanical
refresh; waive instead, with a cited Spec-Drift-Waiver: line. A waiver is a
human instrument: it needs explicit human approval, and an agent never writes
one on its own authority.
Two edits are always legitimate for the spec you are implementing: adding a
file you created to its establishes list (the ownership ratchet refuses an
unclaimed file, and the claim belongs in the same change), and recording a
dated decision entry for a choice the spec was silent on. Changing what the
spec requires is never yours to do mid-build. If the code needs to touch a
unit another spec owns, declare an extends edge naming that spec and unit;
that amends nobody.
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.
- 9d ago Changed · +63 lines · +906 tokens per session 965637373ec6
- 1mo ago Changed · -1 tokens per session 9cead92d7cc4
- 1mo ago Changed · +5 lines · +97 tokens per session e9f2be53adf1
- 1mo ago Changed · -3 lines · -76 tokens per session 129add3d3b2b
- 1mo ago Changed · +13 lines · +173 tokens per session 29dceda8775a
- 1mo ago Changed · +37 lines · +434 tokens per session 31df0e5c34e2
- 1mo ago Changed · +90 lines · +1,121 tokens per session 70bfa3397d9e
- 1mo ago Changed · +8 lines · +260 tokens per session 092602182230
- 1mo ago Changed · +4 lines · +121 tokens per session 9650ab4b3b0c
- 2mo ago First seen · 169 lines · 3,274 tokens per session scan A 22aa33fc75ec
spec-spine AGENTS.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository statecrafting/spec-spine (11 stars, last pushed 8d ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 6,309 tokens to every session, about $0.0252 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 2026-09-07.
spec-spine AGENTS.md compared with instructions from other repositories
| Mod | Type | Stars | Last push | Licence | Scan | Tokens | Works with |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| spec-spine AGENTS.mdstatecrafting/spec-spine | Instructions file | 11 | 8d ago | Apache-2.0 | A | 6,309 | 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 | yesterday | 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 |