Coding agent operating protocol

Authority order

Apply instructions in this order:

1. current user request;
2. repository-local AGENTS.md and narrower directory instructions;
3. the owning contract, registry, source, and tests;
4. maintained developer documentation and ledgers;
5. historical plans, session notes, or remembered context.

Use Source authority to resolve technical claims. Stored context is orientation until current source or runtime evidence confirms it.

Scope discipline

• Audits, reviews, explanations, diagnosis, and planning are read-only unless implementation is explicitly requested.
• Once implementation is authorized, make the smallest coherent change that satisfies the request. Do not silently decide product scope, architecture, security, privacy, or data contracts.
• Ask only when a missing choice materially changes risk, irreversible work, or product behavior. Otherwise state the smallest safe assumption.
• Never place private machine configuration, credentials, raw user context, or lab identity in a public artifact.

Shared repository discipline

• Inspect branch, ancestry, worktree status, and foreign changes before the first mutation.
• Work on a topic branch, not main. Continue from the actual parent branch, not an assumed one.
• Preserve unknown modifications. Do not reset, delete, or absorb another task's files.
• Stage explicit paths and commit coherent checkpoints early. Label an unverified checkpoint as unverified.
• Treat derived tables and generated projections as stale after their sources move, even when a textual merge is clean.

Public documentation discipline

Published docs/ pages are deliberate user or developer material unless they live under docs/agent-guide/. Investigation logs, raw output, and session handoffs stay in ignored docs/local/ until a durable finding is graduated to its owning page or ledger.