Read the houses agent file first

Read the house's agent file first

Purpose

This repo is a set of cross-house defaults — practices that travel well across the repos I've contributed to. But a house that publishes its own agent instructions has already answered "how should an assistant behave here?" more specifically than any general rulebook can. Its file is local law; these skills are only the fallback where no local law exists. The discipline is one of humility about precedence: read the house's AGENTS.md / CLAUDE.md first, follow it, and where it disagrees with a skill here, follow the house — then log the conflict so the skill learns the house is not alone in doing it that way.

Skipping this is a compounding error: you don't just miss one instruction, you apply a generic rule against an explicit local one, which reads worse than having no process at all. The house told you, in writing, and you brought a template instead.

When to use

• First thing on any repo, before invoking any other skill here.
• When two rules seem to conflict and you need to know which wins (the house does).
• When a maintainer references "our AGENTS.md" / "the conventions" in review.

When NOT to use

If the house ships no agent file at all, there's nothing to defer to — fall back to these skills as the defaults they are (and to obey-the-houses-own-tooling for the build/generator conventions, which is about tasks, not agent instructions).

The practice (checklist)

• Look for the house's agent file: AGENTS.md first, then CLAUDE.md or any other agent-instruction file it ships, then CONTRIBUTING/dev-docs.
• Read it fully before invoking any other skill — it may set the build gate, the comment policy, the PR shape, the sign-off, all house-specifically. Done when you have checked it for each of those four and can say which it sets and which it leaves to these defaults.
• Where it contradicts a skill here, follow the house. These skills are defaults; its file is local law. Note the conflict, don't silently override it.
• Quote or point to the specific house rule when you act on it, so a reviewer sees you read their file (not a generic checklist).
• Log any skill↔house conflict in the LEDGER — a recurring one means the skill's advice is house-specific and should say so.

Rationalizations

Shortcut	Why it fails
"I have a solid general rulebook, I don't need to read theirs."	A house that shipped an AGENTS.md told you exactly how it wants agent work done; applying a generic rule against an explicit local one reads worse than no process at all.
"CONTRIBUTING.md is enough, I'll skip AGENTS.md."	Strict houses put the agent-specific instructions (generator commands, comment policy) in AGENTS.md, not CONTRIBUTING — a maintainer named "AGENTS.md" by file when flagging bypass.
"My skill says X, so I'll do X even though their file says Y."	These skills are cross-house defaults; the house's file is local law and wins. Doing X against an explicit Y is the exact "didn't read our rules" signal.

RECEIPT

apache/solr #4612 — a maintainer names the agent file by name, verbatim:

"AI is not using the Gradle tasks we've built & documented (including AGENTS.md) to create them. I can tell because the file doesn't match the pattern that tool creates."

The miss wasn't only skipping a tool — it was not reading the house's AGENTS.md, which documented that tool. Reading it first would have pre-empted the bounce.

Solr AGENTS.md §52 — the house's file carries rules beyond tooling. It states that "changes shouldn't have code comments communicating the change" — a comment-policy rule that lives in the agent file, not just build commands. Proof that AGENTS.md is a broad contract to read whole, not a command index to skim; it is the source comments-about-code-not-change defers to.

Lifecycle

• Signals it worked: no maintainer has to point you at "our AGENTS.md"; your PRs visibly follow house-specific rules a generic contributor would miss.
• What to log on a misfire: the house rule you missed or overrode, which skill here it conflicted with, and how the house wanted it. Record it in LEDGER.md — a repeated conflict means that skill should carry a house-specific note.
• Death criterion: none — deferring to the house's own instructions is a stable principle; only the file's name/location changes as conventions evolve.
• Relates to: the front-gate sibling of obey-the-houses-own-tooling (that one is the build/generator gate; this one is the agent-instruction contract that often points at it) and sign-off-the-house-way (another house-specific rule to read up front). This skill sets precedence over all the others.