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 | $0.03395 | $0.03395 |
| Opus 5 | $0.01698 | $0.01698 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00679 | $0.00679 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00340 | $0.00340 |
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 today.
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 — 173 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
AGENTS.md: spec-spine
New Sessions
Run /init as the mandatory first action of every new session. The command reads this section to derive its execution plan dynamically: any item added here is automatically picked up on the next init. This file is the cross-agent authority (read by Claude Code, Codex CLI, Cursor, Copilot, and any future agent via the AAIF/Linux Foundation AGENTS.md standard).
Init protocol (executed by /init):
AGENTS.md is loaded implicitly as the protocol source: its contents are the protocol, so
/initdoes not list AGENTS.md as a parallel identity read in Step 1 (avoiding the self-reference loop).
The protocol drives the library through its own built binary, target/release/spec-spine (dogfooding). If that binary is missing, build it first: cargo build --release -p spec-spine-cli. Do NOT reach for npx spec-spine here; the npm/py distributions are for adopters, the self-governance loop uses the in-tree binary.
- Load rules. Read
.claude/rules/orchestrator-rules.md,.claude/rules/governed-artifact-reads.md, AND.claude/rules/adversarial-prompt-refusal.md(the three the library scaffolds for every adopter viaspec-spine init, and which it carries for itself). - Parallel reads. Dispatch the following simultaneously (nothing here
mutates the working tree, so there is no required ordering):
CLAUDE.md: project overview and conventionsREADME.md: full project descriptionstandards/spec/contract.md: normative spec-system summarystandards/spec/constitution.md: durable principles (tier 2)spec-spine compile --check: freshness gate for the spec registry (non-fatal; see Registry freshness below)spec-spine index check: staleness gate for the codebase index (non-fatal)spec-spine index render: markdown projection of the committed indexspec-spine index coverage: which source files no spec specifically claims (spec 032; non-fatal, exit 2 if the index is stale)spec-spine index diagnostics: the unresolved-unit diagnostics the committed index records (spec 050; non-fatal, empty output means none)spec-spine registry status-report --json --nonzero-only: lifecycle counts per statusspec-spine registry plan: the ready set (spec 038): which specs can be worked on now and what blocks the rest;(nothing ready)in a finished corpusspec-spine registry list --ids-only: spec id list (for latest-spec detection)ls crates/: library crate layoutls specs/: the spec corpusls docs/: docs surface (design notes, governance)git log --oneline -10: recent historygit diff --stat HEAD~1: last change summary
- Emit the
## initialized: spec-spinesummary block: a layer/crate overview, a## lifecycle:sub-section populated from theregistry status-report --nonzero-onlyoutput (with theregistry planready/blocked line beneath it), the freshness verdicts, the unresolved-unit count fromindex diagnostics, recent activity, and a "ready to help with" line.
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.
- today Changed · +4 lines · +121 tokens per session 9650ab4b3b0c
- yesterday 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 (10 stars, last pushed today), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 3,395 tokens to every session, about $0.0170 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 2026-09-07.
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.