# Front Door

> One canonical AGENTS.md that gives any capable newcomer, human or AI, the repository's identity, boundaries, and rules in one read.

**Tier:** 0 · **Normative weight:** ergonomics; supports `TM-DEC-006`
**Requires:** nothing

## Problem it removes

Every new session — a collaborator, a replacement AI Peer, yourself after a
month away — reconstructs the repository's purpose, boundaries, and working
rules from scattered files, and reconstructs them differently each time.
`TM-DEC-006` requires that correctness never depend on a particular model's
memory or conversation history; a front door is what makes a durable
workspace self-sufficient in practice.

## Mechanism

One `AGENTS.md` at the repository root carries: a two-sentence identity, a
numbered **Start here** reading order (status first), the authority
boundary, a repository map, the load-bearing structural rules, the
verification command, and — when subtrees need local rules — a table of
nested `AGENTS.md` files, each inheriting the root and overriding only its
subtree.

`AGENTS.md` is an open format launched by OpenAI in August 2025 and donated
to the Linux Foundation's Agentic AI Foundation in December 2025, with
native support in Codex, Cursor, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot coding agent,
VS Code, Devin, and roughly twenty other tools. **Claude Code is not among
them**: it reads `CLAUDE.md`. The compatible shape is a `CLAUDE.md` stub
whose body is a pointer sentence plus the import line `@AGENTS.md`, so one
canonical file serves both audiences.

## Cost

Authoring: an hour of honest writing. Per change: touch it only when a
boundary or rule actually changes. Per session: negative — it is the file
that makes every session cheaper.

## Do not adopt when

The repository is a scratchpad or archive nobody will enter cold. A front
door that is not maintained misleads more than silence.

## Evidence

Observed in every maintained Kinra repository. The nested-guidance tiering
was recorded as a decision in the flow repository
([assessed report](/docs/truth-machine/implementations/flow/)), and the
`CLAUDE.md → @AGENTS.md` stub is the pattern kinra-site itself uses.

## Template

[`templates/front-door/AGENTS.md`](/docs/truth-machine/templates/front-door/AGENTS.md)

## Related patterns

[Status Document](/docs/truth-machine/kit/status-document/) is the first
thing the front door points at.
[Authority Boundary](/docs/truth-machine/kit/authority-boundary/) is
usually a section of this file before it earns its own mechanism.