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AGENTS.md – Open format for guiding coding agents

agents.md

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Re: AGENTS.md – Open format for guiding coding agents

#111

I'm still not convinced that separating README.md and AGENTS.md is a good idea.

It is. README is for humans, AGENTS / etc is for LLMs. Document how to use and install your tool in the readme. Document how to compile, test, architecture decisions, coding standards, repository structure etc in the agents doc.

We have CONTRIBUTING.md for that. Seems to me the author just doesn't know about it?

Re: AGENTS.md – Open format for guiding coding agents

#112
post #81

This should've been an .agents¹ with an index.md. For tiny, throwaway projects, a monolithic .md file is fine. A folder allows more complex projects to use "just enough hierarchy" to provide structure, with index.md as the entry point. Along with top-level universal guidance, it can include an organization guide (easily maintained with the help of LLMs). index.md ├── auth.md ├── performance.md ├── code_quality ├── da…

I like this idea. Do you have any middleware in your current setup that added the contents of this directory to the agent prompt?

I'm building a little tool like this for myself. It's almost ready to be open-sourced. Just need to clean up some code and write better documentation.

Re: AGENTS.md – Open format for guiding coding agents

#116
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Projects need to stop inventing their own root level files and directories. Stop polluting the root dir. I'm not a fan of the name "well-known", but at least it's a convention [1]. I think it'd be great if we took something like XDG [2] and made it common for repositories, build scripts, package managers, tooling configs, etc. [1] https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8615 [2] https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/XDG_B…

.config is a good name, and has a small following https://dot-config.github.io

This has my vote. Thank you for sharing.

Re: AGENTS.md – Open format for guiding coding agents

#118
post #81

This should've been an .agents¹ with an index.md. For tiny, throwaway projects, a monolithic .md file is fine. A folder allows more complex projects to use "just enough hierarchy" to provide structure, with index.md as the entry point. Along with top-level universal guidance, it can include an organization guide (easily maintained with the help of LLMs). index.md ├── auth.md ├── performance.md ├── code_quality ├── da…

I like this idea. Do you have any middleware in your current setup that added the contents of this directory to the agent prompt?

I'd be interested in smarter ways of doing this, but currently I just use my CLAUDE.local.md to serve as the index.md in my example. It includes the 'specialist' .md files with their relative paths and descriptions, and tells Claude Code to use these when planning.

I also have explicit `xnew`, `xplan`, `xcode` and `xcheck` commands in CLAUDE.md that reinforce this. For example, here's my `xnew`:

  ## Remember Shortcuts
  Remember the following shortcuts, which the user may invoke at any time.
  
  ### XNEW
  When I type "xnew", this means:

  ```Understand all BEST PRACTICES listed in CLAUDE.md.
  Your code SHOULD ALWAYS follow these best practices.
  REVIEW relevant documentation in .agents/ before starting new work.
  Your code SHOULD use existing patterns and architectural decisions
  documented there rather than creating new approaches.```

Re: AGENTS.md – Open format for guiding coding agents

#119
How are you actually running this in practice with Claude Code? Do you just tell Claude to always read and follow AGENTS.md, or do you also use an MCP server to strictly control which commands (like pnpm test or pnpm lint) it can run? I’d love to hear what workflows or best practices have worked well for you in day-to-day use.

Re: AGENTS.md – Open format for guiding coding agents

#120

How are you actually running this in practice with Claude Code? Do you just tell Claude to always read and follow AGENTS.md, or do you also use an MCP server to strictly control which commands (like pnpm test or pnpm lint) it can run? I’d love to hear what workflows or best practices have worked well for you in day-to-day use.

I have Claude Code maintain the files and reference links between them.
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