Agent Instruction Drift Check

Agent Instruction Drift Check is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from niels-emmer/myace. It costs 38 tokens per session (728 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A procedure for checking whether agent instruction files such as AGENTS.md or CLAUDE.md still match the code and configuration.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it before releases, after major changes, or regularly to compare documented instructions with the current project and flag mismatches.
Why use it?
These files can become outdated after refactors or dependency changes and then send coding agents toward incorrect commands, paths, or rules.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Which agent this was written for is unclear — built for aider. Also seen: mentions CLAUDE.md; mentions AGENTS.md; mentions Codex.

Good fit Use it before releases, after major changes, or regularly to compare documented instructions with the current project and flag mismatches.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/niels-emmer/myace/drift-check
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.

Any agent
npx skills add niels-emmer/myace --skill drift-check
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/niels-emmer/myace

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Wrote 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.

agentmods badge for Agent Instruction Drift Check

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/niels-emmer/myace/drift-check/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/niels-emmer/myace/drift-check)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/niels-emmer/myace/drift-check"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/niels-emmer/myace/drift-check/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.

agentmods 80×15 button for Agent Instruction Drift Check

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/niels-emmer/myace/drift-check"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/niels-emmer/myace/drift-check.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 38 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 728 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
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 5.1 $0.00038 $0.00728
Opus 5 $0.00019 $0.00364
Sonnet 5 $0.00008 $0.00146
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00073

Measured 10d ago against content hash 150b58cfd299, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-10, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

Agent Instruction Drift Check 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 10d 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.

collections/additional/editor/skills/drift-check/SKILL.md · 40 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 40 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Purpose

Agent-facing instruction files (AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md, or similar) are read by coding agents at the start of a task, not exercised by tests or compilers — nothing forces them to stay correct when the code changes underneath them. A stale instruction file actively misleads whichever agent reads it next: it can point at a command that no longer exists, describe a directory layout that moved, or state a rule the codebase no longer follows. Use this skill periodically, before a release, or whenever you suspect an instruction doc has gone stale.

When to use it

  • Before cutting a release, as part of a documentation pass.
  • After a significant refactor, migration, or dependency upgrade that could have invalidated commands or paths described in the doc.
  • When an agent visibly acts on a rule that turns out to be wrong or outdated — that's a signal to check the whole doc, not just the one rule.
  • On a regular cadence (e.g. monthly) for actively-developed projects, even with no specific trigger.

Procedure

  1. Inventory the doc's claims. Read through the instruction file section by section and list every concrete, checkable claim: commands, file paths, directory structures, described behaviors, architectural statements, named tools or dependencies.
  2. Verify each claim against the real thing, not against memory or the doc's own earlier version:
    • Commands: actually run them (or confirm they exist in package.json/Makefile/pyproject.toml/etc.) with the flags the doc shows.
    • File paths: confirm the file or directory still exists at that path.
    • Described behavior: read the current implementation and confirm it still does what's described.
    • Named tools/dependencies: confirm they're still in use (check the dependency manifest) rather than replaced or removed.
  3. Classify each finding:
    • Broken — command/path no longer exists, will fail if followed.
    • Stale — still technically works but describes old behavior, defaults, or structure.
    • Unclear — doesn't contradict the code but wouldn't be enough for a reader who wasn't there to act on correctly.
    • Accurate — confirmed correct, no action needed.
  4. Propose a specific fix for each Broken or Stale finding — the corrected command, path, or description — rather than just flagging that something's wrong.
  5. Check for cross-doc duplication while you're in there. If the same fact also appears in a human-facing doc (README, docs/), confirm both were checked and both get the same fix — don't correct one copy and leave the other stale.

Read the full file on GitHub · 40 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. 10d ago First seen · 40 lines · 38 tokens per session scan A 150b58cfd299

Subscribe to this mod's changes

Agent Instruction Drift Check is a skill published in the GitHub repository niels-emmer/myace (1 stars, last pushed 3d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 38 tokens to every session and 728 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 2026-08-31.