Prune Context File

Audit and prune a CLAUDE.md or AGENTS.md file using findings from Gloaguen et al. (2025), the first rigorous study of whether context files improve coding agent performance.

Evidence Base (key findings)

• LLM-generated context files reduce performance by 0.5–2% and increase cost 20%+. Never suggest auto-generating a context file.
• Developer-written files marginally help (+4% avg) — except for Claude Code, which showed no benefit from developer-written files either.
• Codebase overviews don't work. Agents find relevant files at the same speed with or without directory listings and project structure sections.
• Context files are redundant with existing docs. They only help when a repo has no other documentation at all.
• Tooling instructions are reliably followed. Naming a specific tool (e.g. uv, pytest, a repo CLI) increases its usage 1.6–2.5× vs. not naming it. This is the highest-value content.
• Instructions cause more testing and exploration, increasing steps and cost. Unnecessary requirements make tasks harder.

Paper: "Evaluating AGENTS.md" — Gloaguen et al., arxiv.org/abs/2602.11988

The Decision Test

For every line or section, ask: Would the agent write different code, run different commands, or make different assumptions without this?