If AGENTS.md smells ripe, your code won’t live up to the hype
AI AND ML
Researchers urge developers to see that less is more when it comes to instructions
If you're exposing your agent to a strong odor, it's time to clean up your instructions.
Risky or poorly structured code patterns are known as "code smells," and it turns out coding agent directives can be similarly redolent, leading to wasted tokens and worse output.
Coding agents rely on configuration files that summarize expected agent behavior. These context-enhancing files are commonly written in Markdown and named either CLAUDE.md for those using Anthropic models or AGENTS.md for pretty much everyone else.
They include various text instructions that advise the coding agent about desired behavior and tool use. And they can get rather wordy. Anthropic advises no more than 200 lines of text because longer files consume model context and may hinder model coherence.
Researchers affiliated with the computer science department of the Federal Institute...
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