Org layer (AGENTS.md)

The dev-centr/agent-rules repository holds both portable rules and the org layer for Dev-Centr team work.

Files

agent-rules/
  user.md              # Portable — forkable baseline
  AGENTS.md             # Org — overrides personal on dev-centr work
  agents/
    _MAIN.md
    editorial/
    engineering/
  skills/               # Team agent skills — see skills/CATALOG.md

Precedence

On any dev-centr/* repository, org rules win over personal portable rules where they conflict. Harnesses do not enforce this automatically — stack AGENTS.md after personal user.md in the always-on slot and instruct the agent explicitly.

If the harness has one undifferentiated always-on field and cannot stack layers, compose personal + org with rules-manager (org still after personal in the composed payload). Geography: Harness-neutral architecture.

Team setup SOP: Org agent rules setup (member-only).

Other orgs: wrapper repo, do not copy

This overlay pattern is house org init for banners this hive owns. It is not a requirement for every GitHub organization or for third-party orgs you only contribute to.

Why not inside .github? Profile repos are for GitHub’s org landing page, not where developers look for engineering policy. A dedicated {org}/agent-rules repo is discoverable; .github only gets a pointer.

Do not fork, copy, or git-submodule this tree into the wrapper (a submodule pins a SHA and goes stale). Create {org}/agent-rules as an org-owned pointer overlay:

{org}/agent-rules/
  README.md              # pointer to github.com/dev-centr/agent-rules
  AGENTS.md              # thin org overlay only
{org}/.github/
  AGENT-RULES.md         # pointer to the wrapper (not a submodule here)

  • Org-specific guidance → commit in {org}/agent-rules/AGENTS.md

  • Shared portable rules/skills → PR this repo (dev-centr/agent-rules); clone/fetch it as AGENT_RULES_PATH

  • Dev-Centr keeps canonical AGENTS.md + agents/ here; satellite orgs only overlay what differs (ORG, docs host, forge quirks)

Script: scripts/setup-org-agent-rules-wrapper.ps1.

Propagation (satellite orgs)

Satellite wrapper repos do not vendor shared rules. After this repo merges:

  1. git pull in $CODE_ROOT/github.com/dev-centr/agent-rules

  2. Re-compose always-on rules if using rules-manager

  3. Run skill harness-setup only if harness paths changed on this machine

No wrapper-repo PR is required unless {org}/agent-rules/AGENTS.md itself changes.

Rationale: one obvious place per org, one live canonical tree (git pull), no duplicate skill bodies. Skill bootstrap-org phase 3a.

Junction shortcut

cmd /c mklink /J "$env:code\github.com\dev-centr\AGENTS.md" `
  "$env:code\github.com\dev-centr\agent-rules\AGENTS.md"

See also