agents-md
SKILL.md
Maintaining AGENTS.md
AGENTS.md is the canonical agent-facing documentation. Keep it minimal—agents are capable and don't need hand-holding. Target under 60 lines; never exceed 100. Instruction-following quality degrades as document length increases.
File Setup
- Create
AGENTS.mdat project root - Create symlink:
ln -s AGENTS.md CLAUDE.md
Before Writing
Analyze the project to understand what belongs in the file:
- Package manager — Check for lock files (
pnpm-lock.yaml,yarn.lock,package-lock.json,uv.lock,poetry.lock) - Linter/formatter configs — Look for
.eslintrc,biome.json,ruff.toml,.prettierrc, etc. (don't duplicate these in AGENTS.md) - CI/build commands — Check
Makefile,package.jsonscripts, CI configs for canonical commands - Monorepo indicators — Check for
pnpm-workspace.yaml,nx.json, Cargo workspace, or subdirectorypackage.jsonfiles - Existing conventions — Check for existing CONTRIBUTING.md, docs/, or README patterns