My agent.md to improve LLM-assisted code quality
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My agent.md to improve LLM-assisted code quality
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Re: My agent.md to improve LLM-assisted code quality
#2This is a problem that people mostly have to solve themselves. Like, I've been working with Claude for almost a year now and I have never once seen it write "Arrow Anti-Pattern" code. That, and much of the rest, would be fluff in my projects. Agent instructions are best learned from experience project-by-project.
Re: My agent.md to improve LLM-assisted code quality
#3A bunch of these should be enforce with linting, that way people who still hand-craft code get the same kind of feedback, e.g. Always use {}, even on a one-line "if" statement. & Keep function names short. Less than 30 characters.
Then this one really is a pattern that creates a lot of churn:
- Add a small, to the point, comment to explain what the block does and why. Use examples when possible. Propose ASCII drawings to explain complete systems.
The what _is_ the code.
Re: My agent.md to improve LLM-assisted code quality
#4A bunch of these should be enforce with linting, that way people who still hand-craft code get the same kind of feedback, e.g. Always use {}, even on a one-line "if" statement. & Keep function names short. Less than 30 characters. Then this one really is a pattern that creates a lot of churn: - Add a small, to the point, comment to explain what the block does and why . Use examples when possible. Propose ASCII drawin…
I would never tell an agent to write "what does the code do" comments. Their default comments are already way too fluffy.
Re: My agent.md to improve LLM-assisted code quality
#5Agents.md is such a ridiculous concept, just write good contributing docs and then optionally @ the file in whatever agetn file you use.
That way everyone benefits.
Re: My agent.md to improve LLM-assisted code quality
#6Just this one line in AGENTS.md has given better results to reduce if not eliminate verbosity and grandeur.
**Always use ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English
Disclaimer: I saw this listed in some other HN post that I can' locate right away.
Re: My agent.md to improve LLM-assisted code quality
#7Just this one line in AGENTS.md has given better results to reduce if not eliminate verbosity and grandeur. **Always use ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English Disclaimer: I saw this listed in some other HN post that I can' locate right away.
idk who came up with it first, but ASD-STE100 has been floating around more since matt pocock put it in one of his skills
Re: My agent.md to improve LLM-assisted code quality
#8I feel like claude.md is like Asimov's laws of robotics. Whatever you write there ends up eventually messing up everything.
Re: My agent.md to improve LLM-assisted code quality
#9I've read a few of these over the years, and none of them seem to be useful. I have three sentences in my custom instructions, and those are basically all useless, too.
Even my second one, "Avoid decorative or section-header comments. Never use `----` or `====` as comment separators. Comments should explain only non-obvious behavior, rationale, constraints, or implementation details." seems to be ignored by models regularly, so I don't see the point.
But this is in my private harness. Perhaps other harnesses have better instruction following. My custom instructions are prepended to my first user message, not set as a system message.
Re: My agent.md to improve LLM-assisted code quality
#10One tactic I’ve found helpful is multi pass quality improvement. First make it work. Then review for guidelines adherence. Loop until satisfied.