AGENTS Instructions

goose is an AI agent framework in Rust with CLI and Electron desktop interfaces.

Setup

source bin/activate-hermit
cargo build

Commands

Build

cargo build                   # debug
cargo build --release         # release  
just release-binary           # release + openapi

Test

cargo test                   # all tests
cargo test -p goose          # specific crate
cargo test --package goose --test mcp_integration_test
just record-mcp-tests        # record MCP

Lint/Format

cargo fmt
cargo clippy --all-targets -- -D warnings

UI

just generate-openapi        # after server changes
just run-ui                  # start desktop
cd ui/desktop && pnpm test   # test UI

Structure

crates/
├── goose              # core logic
├── goose-acp-macros   # ACP proc macros
├── goose-cli          # CLI entry
├── goose-server       # backend (binary: goosed)
├── goose-mcp          # MCP extensions
├── goose-test         # test utilities
└── goose-test-support # test helpers

evals/open-model-gym/  # benchmarking / evals
ui/desktop/            # Electron app

Development Loop

# 1. source bin/activate-hermit
# 2. Make changes
# 3. cargo fmt

Run these only if the user has asked you to build/test your changes:

# 1. cargo build
# 2. cargo test -p <crate>
# 3. cargo clippy --all-targets -- -D warnings
# 4. [if server] just generate-openapi

Rules

• Test: Prefer tests/ folder, e.g. crates/goose/tests/
• Test: When adding features, update goose-self-test.yaml, rebuild, then run goose run --recipe goose-self-test.yaml to validate
• Error: Use anyhow::Result
• Provider: Implement Provider trait see providers/base.rs
• MCP: Extensions in crates/goose-mcp/
• Server: Changes need just generate-openapi

Code Quality

• Comments: Write self-documenting code - prefer clear names over comments
• Comments: Never add comments that restate what code does
• Comments: Only comment for complex algorithms, non-obvious business logic, or "why" not "what"
• Simplicity: Don't make things optional that don't need to be - the compiler will enforce
• Simplicity: Booleans should default to false, not be optional
• Errors: Don't add error context that doesn't add useful information (e.g., .context("Failed to X") when error already says it failed)
• Simplicity: Avoid overly defensive code - trust Rust's type system
• Logging: Clean up existing logs, don't add more unless for errors or security events

Ink / Terminal UI (ui/text)

• Ink renders React to a fixed character grid — not a browser. Content that exceeds a Box's dimensions is NOT clipped; it visually overflows into neighboring cells and breaks the layout.

• Ink-Text: Never use wrap="wrap" inside a fixed-height Box — wrapped text can exceed the Box height and bleed into adjacent components. Use wrap="truncate" and pre-truncate the string to fit the available character budget (lines × width).

• Ink-Layout: When changing card/cell dimensions, always recalculate how much content fits. Account for borders (2 chars), padding, margins, and sibling elements when computing the remaining space for dynamic text.

• Ink-Overflow: Ink has no overflow: hidden. The only way to prevent overflow is to ensure content never exceeds the container size — truncate text, limit list items, or cap height.

• Ink-FlexGrow: Avoid flexGrow={1} on text containers inside fixed-height cards — the text will try to fill available space but Ink won't clip it if it exceeds the boundary.

• Ink-HeightBudget: When computing how many rows/items fit vertically, count EVERY line used by headers, footers, margins, borders, and scroll indicators. Under-reserving vertical space (e.g., height - 8 when chrome actually uses 16 lines) causes Ink to squeeze out margins between items, making borders collapse. Always audit the actual line count.

• Ink-TrailingMargin: Don't apply marginBottom to the last item in a list — it wastes a line and can push content out of the container. Use conditional margins or container gap.

Never

• Never: Edit ui/desktop/openapi.json manually
• Cargo.toml: For human-authored dependency changes, use cargo add instead of manually editing dependency entries unless there is a specific reason not to.
• Cargo.toml: Automated dependency bump PRs are exempt; when manual edits are necessary, keep Cargo.lock consistent.
• Never: Skip cargo fmt
• Never: Merge without running clippy
• Never: Comment self-evident operations (// Initialize, // Return result), getters/setters, constructors, or standard Rust idioms

Entry Points

• CLI: crates/goose-cli/src/main.rs
• Server: crates/goose-server/src/main.rs
• UI: ui/desktop/src/main.ts
• Agent: crates/goose/src/agents/agent.rs

Awesome Agent Conventions

A curated field guide to the convention files AI agents read, write, and act on.

22 conventions across 11 categories. From common project instruction files to newer agent-web discovery and trust formats.

Agent tools increasingly rely on plain files in a repository or website root: instructions, memory, rules, tool connections, prompt assets, discovery metadata, and protocol hints. The names are easy to mix up, and the adoption levels vary a lot.

This repo keeps the map practical:

• Know what a file is for. Each entry names the convention, usual filename, primary readers, and spec or source.
• Study real examples. Examples are fetched from public repositories by script, with provenance kept at the top of each file.
• Separate practice from proposal. Maturity labels show what is widely used, what is early, and what is still only proposed.

Contents

• Instruction & context · category page
  • 🟢 AGENTS.md
  • 🟢 CLAUDE.md
  • 🟢 Tool-specific instruction files
  • 🟠 OKF (Open Knowledge Format)
• Memory & state · category page
  • 🟢 MEMORY.md
  • 🟢 Memory Bank
• Spec-driven development · category page
  • 🟢 Spec Kit
  • 🟢 Kiro steering files
• Skills & prompt assets · category page
  • 🟢 SKILL.md
  • 🟢 Prompt asset files
  • 🟢 Claude Code commands
  • 🟢 Copilot prompt & instruction files
• Tooling & connections · category page
  • 🟢 MCP server config
• Rules & ignore files · category page
  • 🟢 Rules files
  • 🟢 AI ignore files
• Design · category page
  • 🟢 DESIGN.md
• Web & discoverability · category page
  • 🟢 llms.txt
  • 🟢 pricing.md
• Agent-web trust · category page
  • 🟠 auth.md
  • 🔵 ai.txt
• Identity & protocols · category page
  • 🟠 Agent Cards (A2A)
• Proposed namespace · category page
  • 🔵 The protocols.md namespace

What counts

This list is intentionally narrow. A file belongs here when it is a convention for agent behavior or agent-readable metadata: instructions, memory, skills, rules, tool config, prompt assets, or web-discovery hints.

Any file type can qualify - .md, .txt, .prompty, .json, dotfiles, or a directory pattern. Human-first project docs such as README.md, CONTRIBUTING.md, SECURITY.md, and CHANGELOG.md stay out unless the file has become an agent convention in its own right.

Maturity tiers

The badge is a claim about adoption, not quality. It keeps a proven convention from being presented the same way as a new idea.

Badge	Tier	Meaning
🟢	Adopted	Used in production by multiple tools, projects, or teams.
🟠	Emerging	Published by a real organization, but still early or limited in adoption.
🔵	Proposed	Publicly described, but without clear adoption beyond the proposal.

Instruction & context

Standalone page: categories/instruction-context.md

	Convention	Files	Read by	Spec
🟢	AGENTS.md	AGENTS.md	Most coding agents - OpenAI Codex, Cursor, Jules, Aider, Gemini CLI, Zed, and others	spec ↗
🟢	CLAUDE.md	CLAUDE.md	Claude Code, and tools that read the Claude memory convention	spec ↗
🟢	Tool-specific instruction files	GEMINI.md AGENT.md QWEN.md WARP.md CONVENTIONS.md copilot-instructions.md	Each file is read by its namesake tool - Gemini CLI, Amp, Qwen Code, Warp, Aider, GitHub Copilot - often alongside or as a bridge to AGENTS.md	spec ↗
🟠	OKF (Open Knowledge Format)	.md	Agents over MCP (okfy, openknowledge, superops okf CLIs); Google's knowledge-catalog ingests bundles	spec ↗

• AGENTS.md - A plain-Markdown "README for agents" - build/test commands, conventions, and gotchas an agent needs before touching the code. The most widely adopted cross-tool instruction file.
• CLAUDE.md - Anthropic's memory file for Claude Code - loaded automatically at session start to carry project commands, style rules, and standing instructions across turns.
• Tool-specific instruction files - Per-tool instruction files that predate or coexist with AGENTS.md. Some tools now default to AGENTS.md while keeping legacy filenames alive, so these variants still matter when auditing real repositories.
• OKF (Open Knowledge Format) - A machine-first organizational knowledge base: a version-controlled folder of typed Markdown files (one concept per file) that any agent reads as ground-truth context. Open-sourced by Google Cloud in 2026 as the content layer to MCP's transport.

Memory & state

Standalone page: categories/memory-state.md

	Convention	Files	Read by	Spec
🟢	MEMORY.md	MEMORY.md	Claude Code's auto-memory - the per-project MEMORY.md index it writes and re-reads each session	spec ↗
🟢	Memory Bank	projectbrief.md productContext.md activeContext.md systemPatterns.md techContext.md progress.md	Cline, Roo Code, and Cursor (via the Memory Bank custom-instructions pattern)	spec ↗

• MEMORY.md - A persistent, agent-maintained index of durable facts - written and re-read across sessions so an agent accumulates project memory instead of relearning each time.
• Memory Bank - Cline's structured memory system - a set of Markdown files an agent reads at the start of every task to reconstruct full project context after its session memory resets. The six files shown are Cline's set; tools like Roo Code use an overlapping but different variant.

Spec-driven development

Standalone page: categories/spec-driven-development.md

	Convention	Files	Read by	Spec
🟢	Spec Kit	constitution.md spec.md plan.md tasks.md	GitHub Spec Kit's slash-command agents (Copilot, Claude, Gemini, Cursor, and more)	spec ↗
🟢	Kiro steering files	product.md structure.md tech.md	AWS Kiro (steering files are largely Kiro-specific)	spec ↗

• Spec Kit - GitHub's spec-driven workflow - a constitution plus per-feature spec → plan → tasks files that drive an agent through structured, reviewable implementation.
• Kiro steering files - Kiro's always-on steering docs - product, structure, and tech files that give the agent persistent project context outside of any single spec.

Skills & prompt assets

Standalone page: categories/skills-prompt-assets.md

	Convention	Files	Read by	Spec
🟢	SKILL.md	SKILL.md	Claude Agent Skills, Claude Code, Amp, Agent Skills-compatible tools	spec ↗
🟢	Prompt asset files	.prompty .prompt system_prompt.txt	Prompty tooling, Azure AI / Semantic Kernel, and apps that load externalized prompts	spec ↗
🟢	Claude Code commands	.md	Claude Code - project .claude/commands/ and user ~/.claude/commands/	spec ↗
🟢	Copilot prompt & instruction files	.prompt.md .instructions.md	GitHub Copilot in VS Code / Copilot CLI	spec ↗

• SKILL.md - A self-contained, model-invoked capability file that tells an agent when to load a reusable procedure and how to execute it.
• Prompt asset files - Externalized prompt files - Prompty's YAML-front-mattered .prompty, plain .prompt templates, and system_prompt.txt - that pull the prompt out of source code so it can be versioned and edited on its own. Only .prompty has a formal spec (prompty.ai); .prompt and system_prompt.txt are ad-hoc externalized-prompt filenames.
• Claude Code commands - A Markdown file Claude Code exposes as a /slash-command - a reusable, version-controlled prompt workflow, with optional frontmatter (allowed-tools, model, argument-hint) and $ARGUMENTS and shell placeholders (@file references are a general Claude Code prompt feature, not command-specific). Now converging with Agent Skills, but still widely committed in its own right.
• Copilot prompt & instruction files - Modular, path-scoped Copilot context: *.instructions.md auto-attach to matching files via an applyTo glob, while *.prompt.md are reusable prompts you invoke by name - the granular cousins of a single .github/copilot-instructions.md.

Tooling & connections

Standalone page: categories/tooling-connections.md

	Convention	Files	Read by	Spec
🟢	MCP server config	.mcp.json	Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code / Copilot, and Claude Desktop - every MCP host reads the same mcpServers schema, though the filename and path differ per tool	spec ↗

• MCP server config - A JSON file that tells an agent which Model Context Protocol servers to launch and how (command, args, env) - making a project's tool and data integrations portable, shareable, and version-controlled across every MCP-capable client.

Rules & ignore files

Standalone page: categories/rules-ignore-files.md

	Convention	Files	Read by	Spec
🟢	Rules files	.cursorrules .mdc .clinerules .clinerules/ (pattern) .windsurfrules	Cursor (.cursorrules / .mdc), Cline (.clinerules/ and legacy .clinerules), Windsurf (.windsurfrules)	spec ↗
🟢	AI ignore files	.aiignore .cursorignore .codeiumignore .aiexclude	JetBrains Junie (.aiignore), Cursor (.cursorignore), Codeium/Windsurf (.codeiumignore)	spec ↗

• Rules files - Per-tool rule files that scope agent behavior - older single-file forms (.cursorrules, .clinerules, .windsurfrules) and newer directory-based, glob-scoped forms (.cursor/rules/.mdc, .clinerules/, .windsurf/rules/.md).
• AI ignore files - gitignore-syntax files that fence an AI agent out of paths - secrets, vendored code, generated output - so they're never sent to the model as context.

Design

Standalone page: categories/design.md

	Convention	Files	Read by	Spec
🟢	DESIGN.md	DESIGN.md	Google Stitch natively; and coding agents (e.g. Claude Code) when pointed at it as design context	spec ↗

• DESIGN.md - A structured, machine-readable design specification - tokens, components, and layout intent - that an agent reads to generate or keep UI consistent with an established system. Open-sourced by Google Labs in 2026 as a cross-tool draft spec.

Web & discoverability

Standalone page: categories/web-discoverability.md

	Convention	Files	Read by	Spec
🟢	llms.txt	llms.txt llms-full.txt (pattern)	Docs sites publish it for LLM tools and crawlers - though no major provider has confirmed reading it	spec ↗
🟢	pricing.md	pricing.md	Agents and LLM browsers fetching a clean, parse-able pricing page	spec ↗

• llms.txt - A proposed-turned-widely-published standard: a root-level Markdown file giving LLMs a curated, link-rich map of a site's docs. Published across hundreds of developer-docs sites - though whether the major LLM providers actually read it remains unproven.
• pricing.md - The Markdown twin of a pricing page - same URL with a .md suffix - so an agent gets structured plans and numbers instead of scraping marketing HTML. A concrete, shipping instance of the page.md pattern.

Agent-web trust

Standalone page: categories/agent-web-trust.md

	Convention	Files	Read by	Spec
🟠	auth.md	auth.md	Agents discovering how to authenticate to a service (early adopters)	spec ↗
🔵	ai.txt	ai.txt	AI training/data-mining crawlers that voluntarily honor AI usage preferences; crawler support is not yet reliable	spec ↗

• auth.md - A Markdown file that tells an agent how to authenticate with a service - discovery of auth endpoints and flows. Shipped by WorkOS as a real, working convention, but adoption beyond it is still early.
• ai.txt - A text file declaring machine-readable consent, licensing, or policy preferences for AI training and data-mining. Spawning popularized the deployed root-file pattern, and a 2026 Internet-Draft now proposes a well-known URI; adoption and crawler obedience are still thin, so it stays 🔵.

Identity & protocols

Standalone page: categories/identity-protocols.md

	Convention	Files	Read by	Spec
🟠	Agent Cards (A2A)	agent-card.json agent.json (pattern)	A2A-compatible agents discovering another agent's capabilities	spec ↗

• Agent Cards (A2A) - The Agent2Agent (A2A) capability card - a JSON document at a well-known path advertising an agent's skills, endpoints, and auth so other agents can discover and call it. Now a Linux Foundation project at v1.0; adoption is growing but early.

Proposed namespace

Standalone page: categories/proposed-namespace.md

	Convention	Files	Read by	Spec
🔵	The protocols.md namespace	proof.md	- (no demonstrated readers; aspirational)	spec ↗

• The protocols.md namespace - A single maintainer's pre-registered namespace of ~74 aspirational .md "protocols" (proof.md, signature.md, reputation.md, …) staked as Schelling points for a future agent web. Published concept, no demonstrated adoption - see the page for the audited, honest caveats.

Maintaining examples

Example files are fetched, not invented. The extractor pulls them from public sources, stores them under conventions/<slug>/examples/<source>/<filename>, and adds a line-1 provenance comment. The examples remain under their upstream owners' licenses and terms; see THIRD_PARTY_EXAMPLES.md before reusing them.

To refresh everything:

pip install -r scripts/requirements.txt
python scripts/extract.py          # fetch real files + rebuild each convention's README
python scripts/build_readme.py     # rebuild this README from scripts/targets.json

Re-running is idempotent. A missing target prints a miss and is skipped. Examples are representative samples: any file over 256 KB (for example, a multi-MB llms-full.txt) is truncated with a marker pointing back to the full source. scripts/targets.json remains the source of truth for conventions that have not been migrated yet; the skill-md pilot uses local convention metadata instead. Edit the relevant source and re-run both scripts.

Shortcut targets are available in the Makefile:

make verify          # schema + generated files + example provenance + links
make extract         # refetch public examples and rebuild generated docs
make license-report  # summarize upstream licenses for vendored examples

CI keeps the generated files and links honest. The verify workflow checks that generated docs match catalog metadata and migrated local metadata, and that every spec, example, and instance URL still resolves on each pull request and weekly. Run the same link check locally with python scripts/check_links.py.

Contributing

Read CONTRIBUTING.md. In short: an entry must pass the filter above and carry evidence for its maturity tier. Add sources to scripts/targets.json for non-migrated conventions, run the scripts, and open a PR. The skill-md pilot uses local convention metadata instead. Do not hand-write example files.

Before proposing adjacent standards, check WATCHLIST.md. Project direction lives in ROADMAP.md.

License

The curation, scripts, and original prose in this repository are MIT. Vendored example files remain under their upstream owners' licenses and terms; see THIRD_PARTY_EXAMPLES.md.