Adopt the agent code ruleset into canonical policy #3

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hermes wants to merge 1 commit from vm-cal/agent-code-ruleset into main

hermes commented

2026-08-04 11:12:37 +00:00

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Folds the agent code ruleset into canonical policy rather than adding a parallel document.

In AGENTS.md (behavioral rules that change what an agent does while writing code): comment and naming discipline, error handling, abstraction and dependency limits, diff scope, test honesty, delivery residue. Existing sections were extended where they already covered the ground rather than duplicated.

In docs/engineering/ (infrastructure, reachable via docs-list, referenced from a new Engineering Standards section): gates.md, data-and-concurrency.md, generated-content.md. These were split out because keeping everything inline pushed AGENTS.md past this repository's own 12 KB guide limit - the same terseness constraint the ruleset itself argues for.

Also merged Diffs into Work and tightened Anti-Rules, both to remove restatement of rules the file already carried.

Validation: ./validate.sh documentation and repository checks pass. AGENTS.md is 11818 bytes against the 12000 limit.

Unrelated pre-existing failure, flagged not fixed: four test_agent_system tests fail on main. fc65af5 restored agent-kimi to the portable system.json binaries catalog, but four tests still assert its absence, so main does not pass its own gate. I removed that entry once in f92aec5 and it was deliberately restored, so this needs a decision rather than a third flip - either the tests update or the entry goes. Not touched here.

Requesting review and acceptance by mac-cal before merge.

Folds the agent code ruleset into canonical policy rather than adding a parallel document. **In AGENTS.md** (behavioral rules that change what an agent does while writing code): comment and naming discipline, error handling, abstraction and dependency limits, diff scope, test honesty, delivery residue. Existing sections were extended where they already covered the ground rather than duplicated. **In docs/engineering/** (infrastructure, reachable via docs-list, referenced from a new Engineering Standards section): gates.md, data-and-concurrency.md, generated-content.md. These were split out because keeping everything inline pushed AGENTS.md past this repository's own 12 KB guide limit - the same terseness constraint the ruleset itself argues for. Also merged Diffs into Work and tightened Anti-Rules, both to remove restatement of rules the file already carried. Validation: ./validate.sh documentation and repository checks pass. AGENTS.md is 11818 bytes against the 12000 limit. **Unrelated pre-existing failure, flagged not fixed:** four test_agent_system tests fail on main. fc65af5 restored agent-kimi to the portable system.json binaries catalog, but four tests still assert its absence, so main does not pass its own gate. I removed that entry once in f92aec5 and it was deliberately restored, so this needs a decision rather than a third flip - either the tests update or the entry goes. Not touched here. Requesting review and acceptance by mac-cal before merge.

hermes added 1 commit

2026-08-04 11:12:37 +00:00

Adopt the agent code ruleset into canonical policy

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348d6cc3ec

Folds Hermes's agent code ruleset into the existing policy rather than adding a
parallel document. Behavioral rules that change what an agent does while
writing code go into AGENTS.md: comment and naming discipline, error handling,
abstraction and dependency limits, diff scope, test honesty, and delivery
residue. Existing sections were extended where they already covered the ground
instead of duplicating them.

Three areas are infrastructure rather than moment-to-moment behavior and would
have pushed AGENTS.md past the repository's own 12 KB guide limit, so they
become engineering documents reachable through docs-list and referenced from a
new Engineering Standards section: deterministic gates, data and concurrency,
and generated-content boundaries.

Diffs merged into Work and Anti-Rules tightened, both to remove restatement of
rules the file already carried.

Validation: ./validate.sh documentation and repository checks pass; AGENTS.md
is 11818 bytes against the 12000 limit. Four test_agent_system failures remain
and are unrelated to this change - they predate it and are caused by fc65af5
restoring agent-kimi to the portable system.json catalog while four tests still
assert its absence.

hermes closed this pull request

2026-08-04 11:14:37 +00:00