Skill name+description pairs are preloaded into every session, costing ~6,200 tokens across 39 skills before any skill is invoked. The authoring rules mandated that growth: skill-author:104 and description-quality.md:21 both required padding, while skill-author:102 (the deflating rule) had no FAIL condition behind it. Gates (blocking, no baseline file): - description 250 chars SUGGESTION / 400 FAIL, measured on the folded YAML value - body-only 600 words SUGGESTION / 900 FAIL, independent of the unchanged whole-file 2770-word / 500-line spec backstop - every boundary-clause routing target must resolve to a real skill or agent; catches skill-improve, neuledge-context and gitea-labels - agents take the description gates but deliberately no body gate; a test pins that absence Vale: DescriptionOpener widened to ^This\b, new CompositionNote rule banning architecture notes from descriptions. 10 hits, 0 false positives. Kyberforge's own four skills retrofitted: descriptions 3,364 -> 938 chars (-72%), bodies 8,306 -> 2,487 words (-70%), all via the apm-workflow dispatch pattern. Fixes the skill-improve dangling route and the agent-author misroute to manual review. Also fixes a pre-existing false positive where any line-initial 'read ' was flagged as interactive input, which had already caused two scripts to be rewritten around it. Refs: ADR-0020
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Agent Deployment Modes
Agent definitions deploy at three scopes and behave differently at each. The scope determines which fields are honoured, where files must live, and what identifiers users invoke.
Scope hierarchy and precedence
| Scope | Claude Code path | Copilot CLI path | Who it affects |
|---|---|---|---|
| User | ~/.claude/agents/ |
~/.copilot/agents/ |
All sessions for this user |
| Project | .claude/agents/ |
.github/agents/ or .copilot/agents/ |
This repo only |
| Plugin/APM | <package-root>/.apm/agents/<name>.agent.md — single vendor-neutral file, apm compile emits it to both targets |
(same file) | Sessions with the plugin/package installed |
When the same agent name appears at multiple scopes, user scope wins over project scope wins over plugin scope in Claude Code. In Copilot CLI, repo-level agents override enterprise and org-level; home-directory (user) agents override repo-level on name collision.
Which fields exist where
Field rules are per scope and live with the scope: references/plugin-scope.md for the single
vendor-neutral file, references/project-user-scope.md for the Claude Code / Copilot pair. Read
one, not both. The short version is that plugin/APM frontmatter is an allowlist read from
agent-audit's references/field-inventory.md, narrow because apm compile copies frontmatter
verbatim to every target (ADR-0016), while project and user scope carry the full per-provider
field sets.
Scoped identifiers (Claude Code plugin agents only)
Plugin agents in subdirectories get compound identifiers:
plugins/my-plugin/.apm/agents/review/security.agent.md → my-plugin:review:security
Users must invoke with @agent-my-plugin:review:security. Keep agents flat in agents/ to avoid this — subdirectory nesting is rarely worth the UX cost.
At project and user scope, subdirectory path does not affect the agent's name.
Cache isolation
When a plugin is installed, its directory is copied to a cache. Any path that leaves the agent's plugin directory breaks post-install. Agent definition files must be self-contained — they cannot reference scripts, templates, or shared files outside the plugin.
Agents at project or user scope are read directly from disk; cache isolation does not apply.
Copilot CLI path conventions
| Scope | Expected path | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| User | ~/.copilot/agents/<name>.agent.md |
Home directory |
| Project | .github/agents/<name>.agent.md |
Standard; also .copilot/agents/ |
| Plugin/APM | <package-root>/.apm/agents/<name>.agent.md |
Not a Copilot-only file — this is the single vendor-neutral source apm compile reads for the Copilot CLI target |
The .agent.md extension is mandatory for real Copilot CLI files (project/user scope) — Copilot CLI does not pick up plain .md files in the agents/ directory. The plugin/APM source file also uses .agent.md by convention, since it compiles to Copilot CLI too, but it is not itself a Copilot file.