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/isaacriehm/cairnWrote 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/isaacriehm/cairn/cairn-ground-state)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/rules/isaacriehm/cairn/cairn-ground-state"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/rules/isaacriehm/cairn/cairn-ground-state/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/rules/isaacriehm/cairn/cairn-ground-state"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/rules/isaacriehm/cairn/cairn-ground-state.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 | $0.00170 | $0.00170 |
| Opus 5.5 | $0.00068 | $0.00068 |
| Sonnet 5.5 | $0.00034 | $0.00034 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00017 | $0.00017 |
Grade A, and why
cairn-ground-state 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.
What it actually says
This project uses Cairn for ground-state management. If .cairn/ exists at
the repo root:
- Never invent architectural patterns; check
cairn_in_scope({path_globs})before making structural changes. - Before UI work, call
cairn_components_in_scope({path_globs})— USE existing components before EXTENDING, EXTEND before CREATE. - Record non-obvious choices with
cairn_record_decision. - Use the
cairn-directionskill (or/cairn-directioncommand) for any code-change task — Cursor has no per-prompt working-header hook; invoke direction manually when starting substantive work.
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 · 17 lines · 170 tokens per session scan A ab29a0c9823e
cairn-ground-state is a cursor rule published in the GitHub repository isaacriehm/cairn (6 stars, last pushed 25d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 170 tokens to every session, about $0.0007 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.
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