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.
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Intense-Visions/harness-engineeringWrote 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/rules/intense-visions/harness-engineering/validate-before-commit)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/rules/intense-visions/harness-engineering/validate-before-commit"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/rules/intense-visions/harness-engineering/validate-before-commit.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 | $0.00402 | $0.00402 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00201 | $0.00201 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00080 | $0.00080 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00040 | $0.00040 |
Grade A, and why
validate-before-commit 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 3d 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.
What it actually says
Validate before commit
Before any commit lands, the project must pass harness validation. This is non-negotiable mechanical enforcement, not a stylistic preference.
What to run
For every change set, before suggesting git commit:
npx @harness-engineering/cli validate
# If the project's adoption level is intermediate or above:
npx @harness-engineering/cli check-deps
If harness is on PATH (npm install path), drop the npx @harness-engineering/cli prefix.
When validation fails
Treat the failure as a bug to fix, not noise to suppress. Specifically:
- Schema errors in
harness.config.json— fix the schema; do not bypass. - Missing AGENTS.md sections — add the required content; do not delete the validation.
- Layer violations (
harness check-deps) — either refactor the imports to respect the boundary, or update the constraint with a deliberate, documented decision. Never bypass with a one-off exception.
What you must not do
- Never propose
git commit --no-verifyor any--no-*flag that skips harness checks. Theblock-no-verifyhook (in the standard profile) will reject the command, and proposing it anyway burns trust. - Never suggest "we'll fix it after the commit." If validation fails, the commit is not ready.
- Never assume tests passing means validation passes. They check different things.
Why this rule exists
Harness encodes architectural decisions as machine-checkable constraints. Bypassing validation is bypassing the team's design — surfaced as code, not as a Slack thread. If a constraint is wrong, change the constraint with intent; don't ignore the violation.
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.
- 3d ago First seen · 39 lines · 402 tokens per session scan A ee850abf4d27
validate-before-commit is a cursor rule published in the GitHub repository Intense-Visions/harness-engineering (20 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 402 tokens to every session, about $0.0020 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 2026-09-03.
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