Read the houses agent file first

Skill serhiy-bzhezytskyy/contrib-receipts/skills/read-the-houses-agent-file-first

Claude Code skills for contributing to someone else's repo — each rule backed by a real receipt. Bring help, not noise.

Install

npx -y skills add serhiy-bzhezytskyy/contrib-receipts --skill read-the-houses-agent-file-first

Assembled from the repository path, not quoted from the project. Check it against their README if it does not work.

2 things to look at

13 days oldThe repository was created 13 days ago. New is not bad, but a brand new repository carrying a familiar-sounding name is the shape a typosquat arrives in, and there has been no time for anyone else to find a problem with it.
1 stars1 stars. Stars are a popularity signal and not a quality one, but at this level it is likely that nobody has read this closely except its author, and you would be relying on your own review.

What its author says it does

Copied from the file, not written here

Before applying ANY skill in this repo, look for the house's own agent instructions — AGENTS.md (or CLAUDE.md, or any other agent-instruction file the house ships) — read it, and treat it as the higher authority. Where the house's file contradicts a skill here, the HOUSE wins: these skills are cross-house defaults, its file is local law. A house that ships an AGENTS.md has told you exactly how it wants agent-assisted work done; ignoring it while following a generic rulebook is the fastest way to read as noise. This is the meta-skill that runs first, before the rest of the front-gate. Use when starting on any repo you don't own, before invoking any other skill here, or when two rules conflict. Trigger terms: AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md, agent-instruction file, agent instructions, house conventions, which rule wins, precedence.

SKILL.md

5.7 KB, as published. Nobody here has run it

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.

Gives 0 of the 12 instructions most memory context skills give

Counted across 674 of the 847 authors here whose files we hold, read 2026-08-06

inform the user when setup is completein 21 of 674, across 6 files
confirm the draft with the user before writingin 21 of 674, across 6 files
update the agent skills block in place if it existsin 21 of 674, across 6 files
present findings to the userin 20 of 674, across 5 files
write the three docs files from seed templatesin 20 of 674, across 5 files
ask the user about each decision one at a timein 19 of 674, across 4 files
edit CLAUDE.md if it existsin 18 of 674, across 3 files
explore current repo statein 18 of 674, across 3 files
do not overwrite user edits to surrounding sectionsin 18 of 674, across 3 files
back up the original file before overwritingin 16 of 674, across 8 files
keep the memory index under 200 linesin 15 of 674
Provide actionable steps and verificationin 13 of 674, across 2 files

Said here and by no other author read

check the repo for an agent file before invoking any other skill
read the house agent file fully before invoking other skills
follow the local agent file over any skill here
note any conflict instead of silently overriding the house
cite the local agent file when acting on a rule from it
log every skill and local agent file conflict

Grouped from the skills themselves: near-identical wordings counted once, and counted by distinct author, so one author publishing three of these counts once.