The Pope Bot is an app for configuring an autonomous AI agent that can chat, run coding work, and operate continuously through connected language models and coding agents. People use it for questions, code changes, background development jobs, and live browser-based coding sessions. Its catalogue add-ons extend the bot with commands, skills, and operating instructions.
Borrowing it
Nothing to install: this file belongs to stephengpope/thepopebot. 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/stephengpope/thepopebot/main/CLAUDE.mdgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/stephengpope/thepopebotWrote 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/stephengpope/thepopebot/claude-md)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/instructions/stephengpope/thepopebot/claude-md"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/stephengpope/thepopebot/claude-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 | $0.02915 | $0.02915 |
| Opus 5 | $0.01458 | $0.01458 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00583 | $0.00583 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00292 | $0.00292 |
Grade A, and why
thepopebot CLAUDE.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 8d 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 — 158 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
thepopebot — Package Source Reference
Technical reference for AI assistants modifying the thepopebot NPM package source code.
Architecture: Event Handler (Next.js) creates agent-job/* branches → launches Docker agent container locally (Claude Code, Pi, etc.) → task executed → PR created → auto-merge → notification. Agent jobs log to logs/{JOB_ID}/.
Deployment Model
The npm package (api/, lib/, config/, bin/) is published to npm. In production:
- Event handler: Docker image bakes the npm package, Next.js app source (
web/), and.nextbuild output. User project directories (agent-job/,event-handler/,skills/,skills-library/,.env,data/, etc.) are individually volume-mounted into/app. The full project is also mounted at/projectfor git access. Runsserver.jsvia PM2 behind Traefik reverse proxy. lib/paths.js: ExportsPROJECT_ROOT(process.cwd()). This is how the installed npm package finds the volume-mounted user project files.- Agent-job containers: Ephemeral Docker containers clone
agent-job/*branches separately — use named volumes for workspace. Seedocker/CLAUDE.md. - Local install: Gives users CLI tools (
init,setup,upgrade) and configuration scaffolding.
Package vs. Templates — Where Code Goes
All event handler logic, API routes, library code, and core functionality lives in the npm package (api/, lib/, config/, bin/). This is what users import when they import ... from 'thepopebot/...'.
The templates/ directory contains only files that get scaffolded into user projects via npx thepopebot init. Templates are for user-editable configuration and thin wiring — things users are expected to customize or override. Never add core logic to templates.
When adding or modifying event handler code, always put it in the package itself (e.g., api/, lib/), not in templates/. Templates should only contain:
- Configuration files users edit (
agent-job/SYSTEM.md,agent-job/CRONS.json,event-handler/TRIGGERS.json, etc.) - GitHub Actions workflows
- Docker compose (
docker-compose.yml) - CLAUDE.md files for AI assistant context in user projects
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.
- 8d ago First seen · 158 lines · 2,915 tokens per session scan A 6bb01548e947
thepopebot CLAUDE.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository stephengpope/thepopebot (1,860 stars, last pushed 3mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 2,915 tokens to every session, about $0.0146 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.