Acreadiness Policy

AgentRC readiness policies

Select, create, or apply AgentRC JSON policies that customize readiness scoring by disabling irrelevant criteria, overriding impact or level, setting pass-rate thresholds, and chaining organization baselines with team-specific overrides.

When to invoke

• "Show which AgentRC policies are currently in effect."
• "Create a strict frontend readiness policy."
• "Apply this AgentRC policy and rerun readiness."
• "Set custom weights or pass-rate thresholds for CI gating."
• "Make an org-wide baseline with team overrides."

Inputs

Use $ARGUMENTS as one of these subcommands: show, new <name>, or apply <path-or-pkg>. If $ARGUMENTS is empty, infer the intended action from the user request and ask only for the missing policy name or source path.

Policy model

A policy is a JSON file with three optional top-level sections: criteria, extras, and thresholds. JSON policies can disable, override, and set thresholds, but cannot add new criteria. For new detection logic, direct users to AgentRC's TypeScript plugin system at docs/dev/plugins.md.

{
  "name": "my-policy",
  "criteria": {
    "disable": ["env-example", "observability", "dependabot"],
    "override": {
      "readme": { "impact": "high", "level": 2 },
      "lint-config": { "title": "Linter required" }
    }
  },
  "extras": {
    "disable": ["pre-commit"]
  },
  "thresholds": {
    "passRate": 0.9
  }
}

Built-in starting points in examples/policies/:

Scoring and thresholds

Score formula: Score = 1 − (deductions / max possible weight).

Typical pass-rate thresholds: 0.7 lenient, 0.85 standard, and 1.0 strict.

Procedure

1. For show, read agentrc.config.json and report the policies array, or state that no policies are configured.
2. For new <name>, scaffold policies/<name>.json with sensible defaults and walk the user through what to disable, what must-haves to raise, and the pass-rate threshold.
3. Reference a new policy from agentrc.config.json as { "policies": ["./policies/<name>.json"] }.
4. For apply <path-or-pkg>, run agentrc readiness --json --policy <source> and re-render the report by handing off to assess or the ai-readiness-reporter workflow.
5. For layered policies, chain sources in order with --policy ./org-baseline.json,./team-frontend.json.
6. For CI gating, combine policy selection with --fail-level.

Commands and CI examples

npx -y github:microsoft/agentrc readiness --json --policy ./org-baseline.json,./team-frontend.json

- run: npx -y github:microsoft/agentrc readiness --policy ./policies/strict.json --fail-level 3

Operating rules

• Never silently disable a pillar: if the user wants to disable observability, confirm and explain the trade-off.

• Prefer overriding impact over disabling: disabling hides the gap entirely; overriding keeps it visible in the report.

• Recommend extras stay enabled: extras cost nothing because they do not affect the score.

• Suggest layering: most organizations want a baseline policy plus per-team overrides chained with --policy a.json,b.json.

• Use built-in policies first: start from strict.json, ai-only.json, or repo-health-only.json before writing a custom policy from scratch.

• Common override IDs include readme and codeowners; raise these must-haves instead of disabling them when they are organizational requirements.

Output template

## AgentRC policy result

**Status:** shown | created | applied | needs input | blocked
**Subcommand:** show | new | apply
**Policy source:** <path, package, or configured chain>

### Policy effect
- Disabled criteria/extras: <items or none>
- Overrides: <criteria and impact/level/title changes>
- Thresholds: <passRate and CI gate>

### Commands or files
- `<command or file path>`: <result>

Quality gate

• $ARGUMENTS was resolved to show, new <name>, or apply <path-or-pkg>.
• Built-in policies in examples/policies/ were considered before custom policy creation.
• Disabling a criterion or pillar is confirmed and its trade-off is explained.
• Impact weights, pass-rate threshold, and grade effects are stated when scoring changes.
• Layered policies preserve org baseline before team override order.
• CI gating uses --fail-level when enforcement is requested.
• The output follows ## Output template exactly.