universal-engineering-standard

The Universal Software Engineering Standard (edition 2026-11-01) as an Agent Skill. SKILL.md plus references/ is the complete standard; there is no separate source document.

• Scope: web, mobile, desktop, API, backend, CLI, data, ML, and AI applications.
• Purpose: software that is correct, simple, secure, understandable, maintainable, observable, and economical to change.

Plain Markdown in the open Agent Skills format (SKILL.md + references/), so any agent that loads skills can use it.

Install

Personal (all your projects)

Clone once, then link the clone into each agent's skills directory:

git clone https://github.com/PyModel/universal-engineering-standard.git
cd universal-engineering-standard

# Claude Code
mkdir -p "$HOME/.claude/skills"
ln -sn "$(pwd)" "$HOME/.claude/skills/universal-engineering-standard"

# Codex and other agents that read the shared ~/.agents/skills directory
mkdir -p "$HOME/.agents/skills"
ln -sn "$(pwd)" "$HOME/.agents/skills/universal-engineering-standard"

Other agents: link the clone into whatever directory that agent reads skills from (see its docs). git pull in the clone updates every link.

Check the target first with ls -ld <target>. If a link is already there, ln -sn stops with File exists; if an older copy is there as a real directory, ln puts the new link inside it instead. Either way, remove or rename the old entry, then rerun ln -sn.

Project (shared with collaborators)

Commit a copy inside the project, since a symlink into your home directory does not exist on other machines. From the project root, with DIR set to the directory your agent reads (.claude/skills for Claude Code, .agents/skills for Codex):

DIR=.agents/skills
mkdir -p "$DIR"
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/PyModel/universal-engineering-standard.git "$DIR/universal-engineering-standard"
rm -rf "$DIR/universal-engineering-standard/.git"

Agents without skill support

Vendor the skill into the project as above, then add this line to the project's AGENTS.md (or CLAUDE.md, .cursorrules, GEMINI.md, .github/copilot-instructions.md), using the path where you placed it:

Before architecture, pattern, dependency, or infrastructure decisions, audits, or declaring a change done, read `.agents/skills/universal-engineering-standard/SKILL.md` and follow it.

Maintaining the skill

• python3 scripts/check.py checks local links and eval case/rubric correspondence; CI also runs the official skills-ref validate on the checkout and on the git archive artifact, and checks that the artifact has every referenced file and no maintainer files.
• evals/ holds the behavioral evaluation corpus and procedure; see evals/README.md.
• evals/, scripts/, and .github/ are export-ignored, so git archive HEAD produces the bare installable skill.

License

MIT. See LICENSE.

© 2026 PyModel LLC