Agent Rules 🤖

A command-line tool that allows you to manage a single Source of Truth markdown file for your AI coding instructions and links/syncs it to all your AI coding agents (Claude Code, Roo Code, Windsurf, Cline, Copilot, Aider, Codex, ZCode, OpenCode, Pi Agent, etc.).

Features

• Centralized Source of Truth: Define your persona, coding standards, preferred libraries, and workflow configurations in one place (defaults to ~/RULES.md).
• Interactive Console UI: An easy-to-use checklist terminal interface to select which agents to target.
• Smart Merger: If you already have existing rule files for specific agents, you can append their contents to your Source of Truth or back them up.
• Robust Symlink/Hardlink Fallbacks:
  • Symlinks on Windows require Developer Mode or Administrator privileges.
  • If a symlink fails, Agent Rules automatically falls back to a Hard Link (fs.linkSync), which behaves identically to a symlink for file edits but requires no special privileges!
  • If both fail, it falls back to a copy.
• Special Aider Support: Automatically appends the Conventions file to your global ~/.aider.conf.yml list so Aider loads it automatically.

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Quickstart 🚀

The easiest way to run the tool is directly via npx without any installation:

npx rules-md

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Local Installation & Running

Run directly with Node

Navigate to this directory and run:

node index.js

Install globally (Optional)

To make the rules-md command available anywhere on your system:

npm link
# or
npm install -g .

Then simply run:

rules-md

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Supported AI Coding Agents

Agent	Global Instructions Path	Notes
Antigravity	~/.gemini/GEMINI.md	Google Antigravity global agent rules file.
Claude Code	~/.claude/CLAUDE.md	Automatically loaded at startup.
Roo Code / Roo Cline	~/.roo/rules/global_rules.md	Reads all markdown files in rules folder.
Windsurf (Cascade)	~/.codeium/windsurf/memories/global_rules.md	Central memories configuration.
Cline (Documents)	~/Documents/Cline/Rules/global_rules.md	Cline's central rules directory.
Cline / Common	~/.agents/AGENTS.md	Shared standard agent instructions path.
GitHub Copilot (JetBrains)	%LOCALAPPDATA%/github-copilot/intellij/global-copilot-instructions.md	Local appdata path.
GitHub Copilot (CLI)	~/.copilot/copilot-instructions.md	Default CLI config.
Aider	~/.aider.conventions.md	Handled via ~/.aider.conf.yml read block.
Z.ai ZCode	~/.zcode/AGENTS.md	Central ZCode instructions path.
OpenCode	~/.config/opencode/AGENTS.md	Standard OpenCode path.
Pi Agent	~/.pi/agent/AGENTS.md	Pi Agent instructions path.
OpenAI Codex	~/.codex/AGENTS.md	OpenAI Codex agent global rules file.
Kimi Code CLI	~/.kimi-code/AGENTS.md	Kimi Code CLI global instructions.
Mistral Vibe CLI	~/.vibe/AGENTS.md	Mistral Vibe CLI global rules.

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Editor Integration Tips

For tools that store rules in Settings UI or databases instead of the filesystem:

• Cursor: Open Cursor Settings > General > Rules for AI and copy-paste your rules there.
• VS Code Copilot: Add your source rules folder path to the chat.instructionsFilesLocations setting in VS Code.