shell-scripts

Workspace rules for writing shell scripts that run safely with strict error handling and work with both Podman and Docker.

In plain words
What is it for?
Creating or changing workspace scripts, including service startup, shutdown, status, logs, backups, and customization handling.
Why use it?
They keep scripts consistent, compatible with the workspace tools, and easier to diagnose through shared output conventions.

Cursor rule for Cursor

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add rules/benwilcock/rhdh-lab/shell-scripts
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/benwilcock/rhdh-lab

Made for: Cursor.

Per session 0 Nothing until a file matches its globs; then the whole rule loads.
When invoked 391 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
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.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00000 $0.00391
Opus 5 $0.00000 $0.00196
Sonnet 5 $0.00000 $0.00078
Haiku 4.5 $0.00000 $0.00039

Measured yesterday against content hash a1d52a782e36, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

shell-scripts 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 yesterday.

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.

.cursor/rules/shell-scripts.mdc · 41 lines

What it actually says

Shell Script Standards

General Requirements

  • Use set -euo pipefail at the top of scripts
  • Maintain backward compatibility when modifying existing scripts
  • Test with both Podman (podman compose) and Docker (docker compose)
  • Document any breaking changes in commit messages and relevant docs
  • Follow the existing color-coded output convention (RED=errors, GREEN=success, YELLOW=warnings, BLUE=info)

Key Scripts Reference

Workspace Root

  • lab -- Unified CLI with subcommands: up, down, status, logs, help
  • backup.sh -- Create portable backup archive of customizations and workspace files

rhdh-customizations/

  • apply-customizations.sh -- Copy customization files into rhdh-local/ (called automatically by ./lab up)
  • remove-customizations.sh -- Remove customization copies from rhdh-local/ (called automatically by ./lab down and ./lab up --baseline)

rhdh-local/ (PRISTINE -- do not modify unless contributing upstream)

  • wait-for-plugins-and-start.sh -- RHDH entrypoint: waits for plugins, merges config, starts Backstage
  • prepare-and-install-dynamic-plugins.sh -- Plugin installer entrypoint: links config, runs install

When Modifying Scripts

  • Update the script's header comment block to reflect changes
  • If changing lab subcommands or flags, update docs/scripts.md and docs/quick-reference.md
  • Ensure SELinux-safe bind mounts (:Z suffix) where needed
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.

  1. yesterday First seen · 41 lines · 0 tokens per session scan A a1d52a782e36

Subscribe to this mod's changes

shell-scripts is a cursor rule published in the GitHub repository benwilcock/rhdh-lab (2 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It costs nothing until one of its globs matches a file; then it loads 391 tokens. 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.