bootstrap-agent-config

A repository-inspection guide that creates CLAUDE.md and AGENTS.md files with instructions for coding agents. It checks the project's languages, commands, structure, and important rules before drafting them.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when starting work in a new repository, onboarding an agent, or setting up Claude or Codex instructions for an existing project.
Why use it?
It avoids generic agent instructions that do not match the codebase. It also helps agents find the correct build and test commands and follow project-specific safety rules.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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 skills/dshakes/compass/bootstrap-agent-config
Any agent
npx skills add dshakes/compass --skill bootstrap-agent-config
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/dshakes/compass

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 84 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 743 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 $0.00084 $0.00743
Opus 5 $0.00042 $0.00371
Sonnet 5 $0.00017 $0.00149
Haiku 4.5 $0.00008 $0.00074

Measured 3d ago against content hash 6d8c1c8c7f1a, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

bootstrap-agent-config 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.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 1 executable file (detect-stack.sh), listed below but not scanned — reading those needs a real analyzer, not pattern matching.

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.

claude/skills/bootstrap-agent-config/SKILL.md · 56 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 56 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Bootstrap agent config for a repository

Produce a CLAUDE.md and a symlinked/parallel AGENTS.md that are grounded in the real repo, not generic boilerplate. A good config is the single highest-ROI thing for agent productivity in a codebase — it pays for itself on the first task.

Steps

  1. Detect the stack. Run the helper to get a fast inventory:

    bash "${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/detect-stack.sh" .
    

    It reports languages, package managers, build/test/lint commands, monorepo layout, and whether ADRs/CI exist.

  2. Verify, don't trust. Confirm the detected build/test commands actually exist (read the Makefile / package.json / justfile). Read 2–3 representative source files to learn the real conventions (error handling, test style, naming).

  3. Find the invariants. The most valuable part of a CLAUDE.md is the load-bearing rules — the things that cause incidents if violated. Look for them in: existing ADRs, ARCHITECTURE.md, SECURITY.md, README "gotchas", and patterns the code enforces (e.g. tenant scoping, a trust boundary, a generated file you must not hand-edit). Ask the user if the architecture isn't legible.

  4. Draft CLAUDE.md using the structure in ${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/../../../templates/CLAUDE.md.tmpl as a skeleton. Fill every placeholder with real, verified content. Sections that matter most:

    • One-sentence "what this is"
    • Languages and exact build/test/lint commands (copy-pasteable)
    • Repo layout (only the parts an agent needs)
    • Load-bearing invariants — the "what NOT to do" list
    • How to run/verify locally Cut anything you can't ground in the actual repo. Short and true beats long and aspirational.
  5. Make AGENTS.md track it. Most non-Claude tools (Codex, etc.) read AGENTS.md. Either symlink it (ln -s CLAUDE.md AGENTS.md) so there's one source of truth, or write a thin AGENTS.md that says "see CLAUDE.md". Prefer the symlink unless the repo already has a divergent AGENTS.md.

Read the full file on GitHub · 56 lines

Files

What ships with it

1 file beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

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. 3d ago First seen · 56 lines · 84 tokens per session scan A 6d8c1c8c7f1a

Subscribe to this mod's changes

bootstrap-agent-config is a skill published in the GitHub repository dshakes/compass (19 stars, last pushed 9d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 84 tokens to every session and 743 once invoked, about $0.0004 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 2026-08-30.

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