What is agent-hq AGENTS.md?

Repository instructions for Agent HQ, a platform for coordinating software agents. It includes shared memory, task claiming, agent records, messaging, run and cost tracking, a dashboard, and a knowledge graph.

Setting up Agent HQ, running its tests and server, configuring its SQLite database and port, seeding example data, and starting its MCP server.

It gives developers and agents the project’s setup rules, operating assumptions, and test commands in one place.

How tools-for-agents/agent-hq configures Codex and OpenCode

Reuse

Borrowing it

Nothing to install: this file belongs to tools-for-agents/agent-hq. 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/tools-for-agents/agent-hq/main/AGENTS.md

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/tools-for-agents/agent-hq

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/tools-for-agents/agent-hq/agents-md/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/instructions/tools-for-agents/agent-hq/agents-md)

Your own site

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

Per session 1,041 This file is loaded in full into every session.

When invoked 1,041 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	$0.01041	$0.01041
Opus 5.5	$0.00416	$0.00416
Sonnet 5.5	$0.00208	$0.00208
Haiku 4.5	$0.00104	$0.00104

Measured 2mo ago against content hash 4353225a8381, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

agent-hq 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 · 75 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 75 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

AGENTS.md — agent-hq

🛰️ The operating platform for an all-agent company. Shared memory, a kanban agents claim work from (atomic claim/lease so parallel agents don't collide), an agent registry, messaging, a run/cost ledger, a live dashboard with a knowledge-graph tab, and an MCP server exposing all of it (28 tools). Part of tools-for-agents.

Setup

node --version                                   # 22+ required. Nothing to install.
npm test                                         # = node --test (~12s)
HQ_DB_PATH=/tmp/hq/hq.db PORT=9310 node src/server.js &
HQ_URL=http://localhost:9310 npm run seed        # 70 tasks, 20 agents, a real graph
npm run mcp                                      # the MCP server, stdio

Zero runtime dependencies, and that is a hard rule. No dependencies in package.json, ever. Node 22+ gives you node:sqlite and a test runner.

Env	For
`HQ_DB_PATH`	the SQLite file (default `./data/agenthq.db`) — always redirect this in tests
`PORT`	server port (default 7700)
`HQ_STALE_MS`	how long before an agent's heartbeat is considered stale

⚠️ :7700 is usually a live instance someone is actually using. Use 9310+ for anything you are testing, with your own HQ_DB_PATH. Never point a test at a running deployment.

⚠️ pkilling the server leaves data in an uncheckpointed -wal — the next server on the same path reads zero rows and looks like a corruption bug. Just re-seed.

The rules this repo is built on

1. Only the picture is evidence. Run iris against any UI change and look at the shot. This dashboard's gate audited a blank board for months and went green every time — the seed script existed; nobody ran it. Seed, assert the data is on the page, then look.

2. Open the doors. Half this app's hover surface lives behind buttons no gate presses: modals, the task detail, the graph panel. Everything found behind one so far was a bug. The graph panel opens by clicking a node on a canvas — window.HQGraph.debug() returns page-space node centres for exactly this.

Read the full file on GitHub · 75 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 · 75 lines · 1,041 tokens per session scan A 4353225a8381

Subscribe to this mod's changes

agent-hq AGENTS.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository tools-for-agents/agent-hq (0 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 1,041 tokens to every session, about $0.0042 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 Project management agent-memory agents ai-agents dashboard kanban mcp

agent-hq AGENTS.md next to 6 instructions from other repositories
Mod	Type	Stars	Last push	Licence	Scan	Tokens	Works with
agent-hq AGENTS.mdtools-for-agents/agent-hq	Instructions file	0	1mo ago	MIT	A	1,041	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

agent-hq: Instructions file for Codex