apm-usage

Guidance for APM, an open-source package manager for AI coding agents. It covers installing, configuring, creating, sharing, and governing reusable agent packages and related settings.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when installing or updating packages, configuring MCP servers, authoring or publishing packages, compiling agent context, or troubleshooting APM commands.
Why use it?
It helps teams manage shared agent instructions, prompts, skills, and server configurations consistently across projects. It also explains dependency restoration, version pinning, authentication, and policy checks.

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/microsoft/apm/apm-usage
Any agent
npx skills add microsoft/apm --skill apm-usage
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/microsoft/apm

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 49 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 491 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 $0.00049 $0.00491
Opus 5 $0.00024 $0.00246
Sonnet 5 $0.00010 $0.00098
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00049

Measured 2d ago against content hash a76e5e768e5d, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

apm-usage 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 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.

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.

packages/apm-guide/.apm/skills/apm-usage/SKILL.md · 48 lines

What it actually says

APM Usage

APM (Agent Package Manager) is the open-source package manager for AI coding agents. It lets teams install, share, and govern reusable instructions, prompts, agents, skills, and MCP server configurations across projects.

When to activate

  • User mentions apm or "Agent Package Manager"
  • Questions about installing or managing AI-agent packages
  • Setting up instructions, prompts, agents, skills, or chatmodes
  • Configuring MCP servers through apm.yml
  • Authentication for private repos (GitHub, ADO, GHES, Artifactory)
  • Policy enforcement or apm audit
  • Package authoring or publishing
  • Compiling agent context (apm compile)
  • Troubleshooting apm errors

Key rules

  • Commit these files: apm.yml, apm.lock.yaml, .apm/, deployed harness directories including .grok/, and AGENTS.md
  • Never commit: apm_modules/ (add to .gitignore)
  • Team sync: after git clone, run apm install to restore dependencies
  • Update deps: apm install --update refreshes to latest refs
  • Pin versions: use tags (#v1.0.0) in production, branches for development
  • ASCII only: all CLI output and source must stay within printable ASCII

Reference

For detailed guidance, see the following resources:

Files

What ships with it

8 files 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. 2d ago First seen · 48 lines · 49 tokens per session scan A a76e5e768e5d

Subscribe to this mod's changes

apm-usage is a skill published in the GitHub repository microsoft/apm (3,687 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 49 tokens to every session and 491 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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