A good AGENTS.md is a model upgrade. A bad one is worse than no docs at all

Post by geoffmanning » Wed, Apr 29, 2026, 5:37 AM UTC

Post by simonw » Wed, Apr 29, 2026, 7:32 AM UTC

jeeeb wrote: post #41

simonw wrote: post #22

Most of my projects are without an AGENTS.md/CLAUDE.md at the moment. I've found that if the project itself is in good shape - clear docs, comprehensive tests - you don't need to tell the coding agent much in order for it to be productive. I start a whole lot of my sessions with "Run tests with 'uv run pytest'" and once they've done that they get the idea that they should write tests in a style that fits the existing…

Is actually running the unit tests what is important here though? Could you achieve the same by just telling the agent: “This is a Python project. We use uv and pytest”

Post by themafia » Wed, Apr 29, 2026, 9:28 AM UTC

readitalready wrote: post #8

themafia wrote: post #5

The models are so terrible you have to think ahead of them so they don't make mistakes. This is not an upgrade. This is coping behavior.

That's like saying "the programmers are so terrible you have to think ahead of them so they don't make mistakes".

Post by high_priest » Wed, Apr 29, 2026, 7:08 PM UTC

harpiaharpyja wrote: post #47

bushido wrote: post #21

I think the main thing which a lot of these articles miss is it's not just your Agents.md which can give you a model upgrade or the inverse. But everything your harness looks at could be this. So the skills in your code base, the commands that you've added, the memories that were auto created, they all work towards improving or completely destroying your productivity. And most of it is hidden. You hear people talk ab…

It's funny how often my brain gets redirected to German Shepard Dogs when reading conversations about AI. And I still can't remember what the other meaning of GSD is supposed to be without an Internet search.