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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

#311

Post by lenerdenator »

samename wrote: post #136
wfhrto wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference now is that people are actively trying to remove people (others and themselves) from software development work, so the robots have to have adequate instructions. The motivation is bigger. To dismantle all human involvement with software development is something that everyone wants, and they want it yesterday.

everyone? source?

It's sort of obvious. Humans cost more money than coding agents. The more you can have a coding agent do, the less you have to pay a human to do.

This aligns pretty clearly with the profit motive of most companies.

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

#312

Post by joshwa »

chrismorgan wrote: post #95
sergiotapia wrote: post #8

New Phoenix Framework projects have an AGENTS.md file in the root! It's really cool. https://x.com/alkadaemon/status/1955348410145358199

https://github.com/phoenixframework/phoenix/blob/main/instal... That’s insane . 3000 words of prose boilerplate about the language and framework . Sounds like you need, at the very least, some sort of import directive. I have no idea if “Read and follow the instructions in path/to/phoenixframework/AGENTS.md.” would work. And then the eclectic mixture of instructions with a variety of ways of trying to bully an intran…

The thing about language models is that they are *language* models. They don't actually parse XML structure, or turn code into an AST, they are just next-token generators.

Individual models may have supplemented their training with things that look like structure (e.g. Claude with its XMLish delimiters), but it's far from universal.

Ultimately if we want better fidelity to the concepts we're referencing, we're better off working from the larger/richer dataset of token sequences in the training data--the total published written output of humanity.

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

#313

Post by organsnyder »

oehpr wrote: post #297
zimbatm wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This should have been CONTRIBUTING.md all along. The content of the AGENTS.md is the same as what humans are looking for when contributing to a project.

The most effective argument I have for getting other developers to comment their code is "The agent will read it and it will give better suggestions". Truly perverse, but it works. I agree with you... but the reality is that there's a wide contingent of people that are not capable of understanding "people don't know the same things as me". So they need some other reason.

It's made my project documentation so much better. If I write out really good acceptance criteria, 9 times out of 10 I can point Claude at the ticket and get a workable (if unpolished) solution with little to no supervision.

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

#314

Post by bongodongobob »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #38
bongodongobob wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you publish agent specific things to your codebase? That's personal preference and doesn't have anything to do with the project.

To share the most effective workflows so people don't have to muddle around figuring out what to do?

You're going to try to tell people how to code with agents in the readme? Why?

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

#316

Post by bix6 »

lemming wrote: post #149
bix6 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a rather dismissive response considering the progress they’ve made over the past few years. The other commenter is correct that they use highly detailed maps but you are incorrect as they do not have a remote human operator. I find them more enjoyable than Uber. They’ve already surpassed Lyft in SF ridership and soon they will take the crown from Uber.

you are incorrect as they do not have a remote human operator Yes, they do, the term to search is “remote assistance operator”. e.g. https://philkoopman.substack.com/p/all-robotaxis-have-remote...

That’s phone a friend not someone remotely driving the car

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

#317

Post by [deleted] »

animuchan wrote: post #246
von_lohengramm wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you considered that there are other metrics people are optimizing for nowadays? Perhaps typeability, screen real estate, familiarity/convention, etc.? Do you really want /User Files/Bob's Files/Coding Projects/Python Projects/Bob's Cool Python Library/Source Code/Model Files/SomeObject.py?

While we're at this, let's make it rich text please. I want the important filenames to be in bold italic Comic Sans MS.

[deleted]

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

#318

Post by tortilla »

JSR_FDED wrote: post #153
tortilla wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So just the remaining 80%

I was at 80% a month ago. Now just 1% remains so, give or take 3 years more.

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

#319

Post by alostpuppy »

zimbatm wrote: post #289
CharlesW wrote: post #36

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…

This should have been CONTRIBUTING.md all along. The content of the AGENTS.md is the same as what humans are looking for when contributing to a project.

Dude, this is such a good point.

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

#320

Post by Timwi »

eadmund wrote: post #247
oblio wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Yes, I have, if you re-read my comment. 2. I don't want to fight extreme positions which I did not make. Read this: https://gobolinux.org/at_a_glance.html I didn't say paths have to have spaces, etc. Just be reasonable and >.

Anything with a capital letter requires hitting two keys: Shift and then the desired letter. Thus /Programs requires 10 keystrokes rather than 9. Even worse, since the capital letter is at the beginning of the directory name, I have to type it and am unable to rely on tab-completion. /Programs with its ten keystrokes is over twice the keystrokes of /bin and its four. Short names are quicker to type and require less e…

That's really more the fault of the tab completion. There's no reason why it couldn't complete `prog` to `Programs`. It's just Unix tradition that they don't. I would prefer if they did.
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