I didn't know .md TLD is available!
AGENTS.md – Open format for guiding coding agents
271–280 of 398 posts
Re: AGENTS.md – Open format for guiding coding agents
#272Earlier quoted context omitted.
every example in the wild has these checked in and treated like a lock file where everyone is scared to touch it and introduce weird behavior. personally i think this pattern is a dead end and trying to build deterministic agentic behavior on top of inherently non-deterministic systems is a fools errand.
I mean, by construction you're only ever going to see the examples where people checked them in and published that. It doesn't mean that other people aren't getting more use out of local instructions customized to their particular work.
would be genuinely interested to see data on that, you are right that there is a selection bias for only seeing what I'm describing.
Re: AGENTS.md – Open format for guiding coding agents
#273Earlier 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
Or just config with no dots.
Re: AGENTS.md – Open format for guiding coding agents
#274I haven't really done anything serious with Claude Code, but today I tested starting claude in ~/claude/test, and told it to list my home dir, which it then did.
Is there a way to tell tools like Claude Code that it must never leave ~/claude/test, and don't event think about using absolute paths, or relative paths which contain `..`?
Re: AGENTS.md – Open format for guiding coding agents
#275I haven't really done anything serious with Claude Code, but today I tested starting claude in ~/claude/test, and told it to list my home dir, which it then did. Is there a way to tell tools like Claude Code that it must never leave ~/claude/test, and don't event think about using absolute paths, or relative paths which contain `..`?
Chroot jail?
Re: AGENTS.md – Open format for guiding coding agents
#276This isn't a format. It's just a convention that literally boils down to: Put LLM instructions in a text file and call it AGENTS.md. Well, thanks I guess?
But it's open ! That's the most important part I think. If it wasn't open, you would have to pay a license fee for the owner of the AGENTS.md format. But since it is open, you can simply create a file named "AGENTS.md" without paying anyone!
Holy sh*t, I accidentally for got the "S" and was directly forwarded to PayPal.
Re: AGENTS.md – Open format for guiding coding agents
#277At this point AGENTS.md is a README.md with enough hype behind it to actually motivate people to populate it with contents. People were too lazy to write docs for other people, but funnily enough are ok with doing it for robots. This situation reminds me a bit of ergonomic handles design. Designed for a few people, preferred by everyone.
I still don't get why it can't be just README.md. Just make sure it's minimal bullshit inside.
Re: AGENTS.md – Open format for guiding coding agents
#278I noticed the example of ln command symbolic linking of the files on the front page. I think it’s interesting how the cli aspect of agent coding and tooling is pushing command prompt / powershell users to become familiar with the *nix shells and commands. In the enterprise Microsoft Visual Studio IDE world some of its very alien. I regularly do tutorials for team members that just think of the cli as a place where they execute ps1s, haven’t used wsl2 or git bash profiles or have limited exposure by way of dealing with containers. Not a criticism.
Re: AGENTS.md – Open format for guiding coding agents
#279I haven't really done anything serious with Claude Code, but today I tested starting claude in ~/claude/test, and told it to list my home dir, which it then did. Is there a way to tell tools like Claude Code that it must never leave ~/claude/test, and don't event think about using absolute paths, or relative paths which contain `..`?
it's already read only outside of project directories (except for Bash tool); your only further option is to wrap it in a sandbox, `bwrap` is perfect for this
"don't even think" is in the default system prompt, but it's inherently indeterministic and can be overridden with a direct instruction as you have seen
Re: AGENTS.md – Open format for guiding coding agents
#280This 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…
Except not hidden. Why do people want to hide important files and directories? Particularly documentation? Tradition, I guess, but it's an antipattern that makes everything more opaque. Maybe robot_docs?
Where are they hidden that you are having trouble with? I've had an alias for `ls` that always includes dotfiles and `shopt -s dotglob` in my bash profile for decades. Mac Finder is a little more obnoxious with having to do `Meta+Shift+.` to reveal dotfiles.
Other than that, modern tooling like Git and IDEs do not "hide" dotfiles.
These days, a `.` in front of a file or folder in a repo is more to indicate it is metadata/config. Although I am in favor of putting all that stuff under `.config/`.
> Maybe robot_docs?
No thanks.