Agent Instructions

Treat every committed file as public history.

Product Language

Product name: Agents.
CLI name: agents.
State directory: .agents/.
Use plain nouns: task, agent, role, handoff, finding, decision, verification, approval, status, archive, history, run, loop.
Do not introduce old experimental product names or metaphors as public product language.

Root .agents/ is committed on purpose. It is Agents working on itself.
Local trust state must stay outside the repo in the user's home directory.
Keep machine-local paths, temporary directories, private repo names, and personal environment details out of committed task records.

Commit useful .agents/ task chunks while work is active so humans and agents can share durable state.
Before starting a new task, clean up the completed task state: summarize what matters, preserve unresolved findings, preserve decisions that still apply, and prune transient notes from the working tree.
Rely on git history for detailed past chunks after they have been committed.
Do not let live .agents/ accumulate old handoffs, verification scratch, or status notes that no longer help the next task.

Main binary: cmd/agents/main.go.
App logic: internal/app/.
Agents should build Agents. For implementation and review work in this repo, prefer opening a task and driving the configured roles with agents go, agents run, agents watch, and the task/finding/verification commands.
The IDE or chat agent in use should act as the human supervisor: set scope, inspect status, add decisions, approve boundaries, and commit. It should not silently replace the configured Agents implementer/reviewer loop for normal product work.
Direct IDE edits are acceptable for small instruction-only changes, emergency fixes, or when Agents itself is broken. Record the reason in task state when the work is more than trivial.
Run tests with an isolated Go build cache when sandboxed:

GOCACHE=<isolated-cache> go test ./...

After changing CLI behavior, reinstall the local development binary when needed:

GOCACHE=<isolated-cache> GOBIN=<user-go-bin> go install ./cmd/agents

Start from the visible terminal experience.
Keep agents status scriptable and banner-free.
Keep the interactive banner interactive-only.
Do not add unsupported agent orchestration. Prefer honest missing behavior over speculative automation.
Record meaningful work in .agents/ chunks when it helps the next agent or human continue.
Treat MCP, IDEs, and editor extensions as clients of Agents, not the core implementation surface. The durable source of coordination truth is .agents/ plus git history.