Originally published on AI Tech Connect.
What you need to know These files are the agent's onboarding doc. AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md, .cursor/rules and Copilot instructions are read automatically and prepended to the model's context, so they shape every edit the agent makes. AGENTS.md is becoming the portable standard. As of June 2026 a growing number of agents read a root-level AGENTS.md; Claude Code reads CLAUDE.md rather than AGENTS.md, and its memory docs recommend a CLAUDE.md that imports AGENTS.md so both share one source. Concise beats exhaustive. Every line costs tokens on every turn. Put commands, the architecture map and non-obvious rules in; leave restated obvious advice out. Treat it as living code. Test changes by running a task with and without the rule, fix it when the agent misbehaves, and keep nested files small in a…
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