netlify-agent-runner

A guide for running Claude, Codex, or Gemini coding-agent tasks remotely on Netlify infrastructure. The tasks can work against a Netlify site or a specified project.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to delegate development tasks, run an agent against a site repository, or ask another supported model to review or solve a task remotely.
Why use it?
It lets development work or second opinions run remotely instead of only in the local terminal. It also explains required authentication, project targeting, and account credit limits.

Cursor rule

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/netlify/context-and-tools/netlify-agent-runner
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/netlify/context-and-tools
Per session 50 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 2,514 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 1 finding. 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 $0.00050 $0.02514
Opus 5 $0.00025 $0.01257
Sonnet 5 $0.00010 $0.00503
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00251

Measured 2d ago against content hash ca9a2b953ecd, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

netlify-agent-runner scanned grade A with 1 finding 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 2d 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.

Makes network callslowCapability

Not a fault in itself. Listed so you know the mod talks to something, and to what.

- **Do not curl `https://api.netlify.com/...`** to fetch, create, or stop a task — the endpoint shapes are not part of the public contract.
cursor/rules/netlify-agent-runner.mdc · 161 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 161 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Netlify Agent Runner

Run AI coding agents (Claude, Codex, Gemini) remotely on Netlify infrastructure to automate development tasks on your site.

Prerequisites

  • The site must be linked to a Netlify project (via netlify link or netlify init).
  • Or skip linking entirely: pass --project <name> (a project ID or name) directly to netlify agents:create to target any Netlify site without linking first.
  • The Netlify CLI must be installed and authenticated
  • Agent runs consume plan credits. If the account has no available credits — or the agent/AI usage limit has been reached — netlify agents:create is blocked and the run won't start. That's an account/plan-state issue to surface to the user, not something to work around.

Use only documented CLI surfaces

Interact with agent tasks only through the documented netlify agents:* commands (plus netlify --help and the public CLI reference). Do not go around the CLI:

  • Do not curl https://api.netlify.com/... to fetch, create, or stop a task — the endpoint shapes are not part of the public contract.
  • Do not run netlify api <method> as a recovery hatch when a documented command fails.
  • Do not read auth tokens out of ~/Library/Preferences/netlify/config.json (or anywhere on disk) to authenticate side-channel calls.

If a documented command fails, report the exact error and context to the user and stop — don't invent an undocumented way to reach the task.

How Agent Tasks Run

Read this before creating a task — agent tasks behave differently from running an agent locally, and the differences are easy to miss.

  • Remote, not local. Tasks run on Netlify infrastructure, not on your machine. They operate on the site's connected repository, not your local working tree. The remote agent only sees what has been pushed to the remote — it cannot see uncommitted or unpushed changes.
  • Branch-based. By default a task runs against the production branch (main or master). To choose a different base branch for the agent to start from, use -b <branch> and make sure that branch has been pushed to the remote first, or the agent will be working from code that doesn't exist remotely. -b sets the base (starting) branch — not where the results are written (see the next bullet).
  • Output lands on a new branch — not in place. The agent does not commit its changes onto the base branch you selected. It pushes its work to a new branch with its own Deploy Preview, so your existing branch (or main) is never overwritten. Review the task's results on that new branch / Deploy Preview — don't expect the base branch to change directly.
  • Asynchronous. netlify agents:create returns as soon as the task is queued — it does not block until the work is finished. When the command returns, the task is still running remotely.
  • No webhooks or callbacks. Nothing notifies you when a task changes state or completes. To find out what's happening, you have to poll with netlify agents:show <task-id> or netlify agents:list.
  • Statuses are terminal or not. A task moves through newrunning → one of done, error, or cancelled. Keep polling until the status is one of those last three before you act on the results.

Read the full file on GitHub · 161 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.

  1. 2d ago First seen · 161 lines · 50 tokens per session scan A ca9a2b953ecd

Subscribe to this mod's changes

netlify-agent-runner is a cursor rule published in the GitHub repository netlify/context-and-tools (36 stars, last pushed 6d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 50 tokens to every session and 2,514 once invoked, about $0.0003 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 1 finding (makes network calls). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.