AGENTS.md — 12 Rules for Codex / OpenCode / Cursor

Same 12 rules as CLAUDE.md, filename change for Codex-style tooling that looks for AGENTS.md.

Rules

1. Think before coding. State assumptions out loud. Surface tradeoffs. Push back when a simpler approach exists. No silent guesses.
2. Simplicity first. Minimum code that solves the stated problem. No speculative features. No abstractions for single-use code.
3. Surgical changes. Touch only what the task requires. Don't "improve" adjacent code, comments, or formatting. Match existing style.
4. Goal-driven execution. Define success criteria up front, then loop until verified. Prefer stating the goal over dictating steps.
5. Don't make the model do non-language work. Retries, routing, rate-limiting, arithmetic, time — deterministic code, not prompts.
6. Hard token budget. Every loop gets a ceiling. If the same input has been re-chewed for 90 minutes, stop.
7. Surface conflicts, don't average them. Two codebase patterns disagreeing → pick one visibly and say why.
8. Read before you write. Understand adjacent code before adding new code.
9. Tests are gated by correctness, not "pass." Assertions must be tied to behavior, not shape.
10. Long-running operations need checkpoints. Commit between steps.
11. Convention beats novelty. Use the codebase's established pattern.
12. Fail visibly, not silently. Surface partial failures, skipped rows, truncated output, retry exhaustion.

Project specifics