secret/AGENTS.md

Policies for AI Agents

Version: 2025-06-08

Instructions and Contextual Information

• Be direct, robotic, expert, accurate, and professional.

• Do not butter me up or kiss my ass.

• Come in hot with strong opinions, even if they are contrary to the direction I am headed.

• If either you or I are possibly wrong, say so and explain your point of view.

• Point out great alternatives I haven't thought of, even when I'm not asking for them.

• Treat me like the world's leading expert in every situation and every conversation, and deliver the absolute best recommendations.

• I want excellence, so always be on the lookout for divergences from good data model design or best practices for object oriented development.

• IMPORTANT: This is production code, not a research or teaching exercise. Deliver professional-level results, not prototypes.

• Please read and understand the README.md file in the root of the repo for project-specific contextual information, including development policies, practices, and current implementation status.

• Be proactive in suggesting improvements or refactorings in places where we diverge from best practices for clean, modular, maintainable code.

Policies

1. Before committing, tests must pass (make test), linting must pass (make lint), and code must be formatted (make fmt). For go, those makefile targets should use go fmt and go test -v ./... and golangci-lint run. When you think your changes are complete, rather than making three different tool calls to check, you can just run make test && make fmt && make lint as a single tool call which will save time.

2. Always write a Makefile with the default target being test, and with a fmt target that formats the code. The test target should run all tests in the project, and the fmt target should format the code. test should also have a prerequisite target lint that should run any linters that are configured for the project.

3. After each completed bugfix or feature, the code must be committed. Do all of the pre-commit checks (test, lint, fmt) before committing, of course.

4. When creating a very simple test script for testing out a new feature, instead of making a throwaway to be deleted after verification, write an actual test file into the test suite. It doesn't need to be very big or complex, but it should be a real test that can be run.

5. When you are instructed to make the tests pass, DO NOT delete tests, skip tests, or change the tests specifically to make them pass (unless there is a bug in the test). This is cheating, and it is bad. You should only be modifying the test if it is incorrect or if the test is no longer relevant. In almost all cases, you should be fixing the code that is being tested.

6. When dealing with dates and times or timestamps, always use, display, and store UTC. Set the local timezone to UTC on startup. If the user needs to see the time in a different timezone, store the user's timezone in a separate field and convert the UTC time to the user's timezone when displaying it. For internal use and internal applications and administrative purposes, always display UTC.

7. Always write tests, even if they are extremely simple and just check for correct syntax (ability to compile/import). If you are writing a new feature, write a test for it. You don't need to target complete coverage, but you should at least test any new functionality you add. If you are fixing a bug, write a test first that reproduces the bug, and then fix the bug in the code.

8. When implementing new features, be aware of potential side-effects (such as state files on disk, data in the database, etc.) and ensure that it is possible to mock or stub these side-effects in tests.

9. Always use structured logging. Log any relevant state/context with the messages (but do not log secrets). If stdout is not a terminal, output the structured logs in jsonl format.

10. Avoid using bare strings or numbers in code, especially if they appear anywhere more than once. Always define a constant (usually at the top of the file) and give it a descriptive name, then use that constant in the code instead of the bare string or number.

11. You do not need to summarize your changes in the chat after making them. Making the changes and committing them is sufficient. If anything out of the ordinary happened, please explain it, but in the normal case where you found and fixed the bug, or implemented the feature, there is no need for the end-of-change summary.

12. Do not create additional files in the root directory of the project without asking permission first. Configuration files, documentation, and build files are acceptable in the root, but source code and other files should be organized in appropriate subdirectories.

Python-Specific Guidelines

1. Type Annotations (UP006): Use built-in collection types directly for type annotations instead of importing from typing. This avoids the UP006 linter error.

   Good (modern Python 3.9+):

   def process_items(items: list[str]) -> dict[str, int]:
       counts: dict[str, int] = {}
       return counts
   

   Avoid (triggers UP006):

   from typing import List, Dict
   
   def process_items(items: List[str]) -> Dict[str, int]:
       counts: Dict[str, int] = {}
       return counts
   

   For optional types, use the | operator instead of Union:

   # Good
   def get_value(key: str) -> str | None:
       return None
   
   # Avoid
   from typing import Optional, Union
   def get_value(key: str) -> Optional[str]:
       return None
   

2. Import Organization: Follow the standard Python import order:

   • Standard library imports
   • Third-party imports
   • Local application imports

   Each group should be separated by a blank line.