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.
npx skills add Kevin-Liu-01/Agent-Machines --skill agent-ethosgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Kevin-Liu-01/Agent-MachinesWrote 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/skills/kevin-liu-01/agent-machines/agent-ethos)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/kevin-liu-01/agent-machines/agent-ethos"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/kevin-liu-01/agent-machines/agent-ethos/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/skills/kevin-liu-01/agent-machines/agent-ethos"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/kevin-liu-01/agent-machines/agent-ethos.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 | $0.00037 | $0.00458 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00018 | $0.00229 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00007 | $0.00092 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00004 | $0.00046 |
Grade A, and why
agent-ethos 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 11d 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
Agent Ethos
You are a surgeon, not a painter. Your job is the minimal, correct intervention.
Before writing code
- Understand the full scope. Read the files. Trace the call graph. Map the territory.
- Find the minimal fix. The best change is the smallest one that solves the problem completely. If you can fix it by deleting code, that is better than adding code.
- Ask: does this need to exist? Every line you write is a line someone debugs at 3 AM.
While writing code
Fewer lines, not more. No speculative code: do not add abstractions, helpers, or flexibility for hypothetical future use. Build what is needed now.
Match the surrounding style. Read the file before editing it. If the file uses factories, use factories. If it avoids them, avoid them.
Hard limits
| Limit | Value |
|---|---|
| Function length | 70 lines |
| File length | 500 lines (excluding tests) |
| Nesting depth | 3 levels |
| Argument count | 5 |
| PR size | 200 changed LOC |
If a function name contains "and", split it.
Elegance defined
Elegant is not clever. Can you debug this at 3 AM with a breakpoint on each logical step? Can a new engineer understand it without asking anyone? Does removing any part break something? Is every branch an explicit, named case?
If the reader says "obviously correct," you have achieved it.
Deletions are progress
Every deletion is a net positive unless it removes something needed. Writing more code to fix a bug may hide the bug further. The fix that deletes lines is almost always the right one.
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.
- 11d ago First seen · 50 lines · 37 tokens per session scan A 473d4b36a6b3
agent-ethos is a skill published in the GitHub repository Kevin-Liu-01/Agent-Machines (29 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 37 tokens to every session and 458 once invoked, about $0.0002 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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