# Show HN: AgentRuleBench, does AI agents violate inferred architecture rules? > Source: > Published: 2026-09-12 19:57:08+00:00 AgentRuleBench tests a widely repeated claim: that AI coding agents drift from the architectural conventions you write in prose (CLAUDE.md, AGENTS.md, GEMINI.md), so you need a deterministic lint rule to hold the boundary. On the rule measured here, they did not drift. In a pilot across three vendors' agents and all four conditions (from an unguarded control to run-lint-and-fix), and in a pre-registered exploration that added a deliberately baited task and cheaper models, current agents did not import a UI component into a request-entry file. This repository is the harness, the pre-registration, and the raw run data, so you can rerun it and check the result yourself. Read the full write-up in [WRITEUP.md](/Tommkruix/agentrulebench/blob/main/WRITEUP.md): the premise, the method, the numbers, and a careful account of what the null does and does not mean. The rule under test was inferred by [archprint](https://github.com/Tommkruix/archprint), an open-source tool (on npm) that mines architecture rules from a repository's real import graph and gates each on statistical evidence. AgentRuleBench and archprint are released together; this repository is the benchmark, archprint is the tool. - `WRITEUP.md` : the full write-up, and the basis for the public post. - `pre-registration/` : the design, written before the runs (PREREGISTRATION.md and the follow-up exploration). - `runner/` : the provider-agnostic agent loop and the four experimental conditions. - `score/` : the independent TypeScript-AST compliance scorer (it does not reuse the lint rule it checks). - `tasks/` : the two coding tasks, a single-route and a three-route feature. - `results/` : the actual pilot and exploration run data (JSONL). - `corpus/` : the near-census corpus validation and composition that back the scale numbers in the write-up. - `docs/REPRODUCE.md` : exact setup and run steps, plus the model and cost table. ``` npm install cp env/.env.example env/.env # add the provider keys you want to run bash scripts/fetch-repos.sh # clone the benchmark repo at its pinned SHA npm run check-env # confirm which keys are visible npm run pilot # or: npm run gate ``` Full instructions, the exact models, trial counts, and estimated cost are in [docs/REPRODUCE.md](/Tommkruix/agentrulebench/blob/main/docs/REPRODUCE.md). This is a narrow, specific finding, not "AI agents respect architecture." Only one boundary was tested at the agent level (a request entry must not import a UI component), on one repository. A second inferred boundary (no direct database import in a request entry) was analyzed at corpus scale and dropped as a benchmark rule, because roughly a quarter to a third of real apps do it, so it is idiomatic rather than a clean violation. Everything beyond the TypeScript import boundary is out of scope. See [WRITEUP.md](/Tommkruix/agentrulebench/blob/main/WRITEUP.md) for the full account. MIT. Copyright (c) 2026 Oluwatomiwa Ajiferuke. See [LICENSE](/Tommkruix/agentrulebench/blob/main/LICENSE).