TL;DR:
If you've spent the last month learning about AGENTS.md, I have bad news. It might already be dead. Welcome to the fastest-moving dumpster fire in tech.
The Standards That Weren't
Let me paint you a picture of the absolute chaos:
Week 1: The AGENTS.md Honeymoon
"Finally!" I thought. "A standard for agent configuration!"
I wrote beautiful markdown:
# MyAwesomeAgent
Does cool stuff!
Simple. Clean. Perfect.
Week 3: The SKILL.md Awakening
Then someone on Twitter said: "Bro, we're using SKILL.md now. AGENTS.md is so last week."
Me: 👁️👄👁️
Week 5: The MCP Plot Twist
Anthropic drops Model Context Protocol.
The Discord: 🔥🔥🔥
My configs: 🗑️
Week 7: Existential Crisis
Someone creates yet another standard.
Me, staring at my screen: "Why do we even try?"
The Real Problem (And Why It's Actually Hilarious)
Here's what's actually happening:
Everyone thinks they're solving the problem.
- Big Tech: "Use our standard!" (Spoiler: It locks you into their ecosystem)
- Open Source Bros: "No, use our standard!" (Spoiler: It changes every sprint)
- Framework Devs: "Just use JSON like normal people!" (Spoiler: Which JSON structure though?)
- That One Guy on Reddit: "Actually, YAML is better..." (Spoiler: Nobody asked)
It's like watching people argue about the best way to organize a house that's actively on fire.
The Plot Twist Nobody Expected
Want to know the dirty secret?
None of these "standards" are actually standards.
A real standard requires:
- ✅ A governing body
- ✅ Multiple implementations
- ✅ Backward compatibility promises
- ✅ More than 3 weeks of existence
What we have:
- ❌ Random GitHub repos
- ❌ One person's pet project
- ❌ "Breaking changes" every Tuesday
- ❌ Documentation that's outdated before it's written
What Actually Works (The Boring Truth)
After burning through 5 rewrites and questioning my life choices, here's what I learned:
Stop Chasing Standards
Seriously. Just stop.
Pick literally anything that:
- You understand
- Your team can read
- Works with your tools
- Can be changed later
That's it. That's the list.
Embrace The Chaos
The standard will change. Your config will need rewrites. That's not a bug, it's a feature of working in bleeding-edge tech.
The Hot Takes Nobody Asked For
Hot Take #1: AGENTS.md isn't dead, it just never lived.
Hot Take #2: The "winning" standard will be whichever one Claude/GPT/Gemini starts natively understanding.
Hot Take #3: We'll still be having this argument in 2026.
Hot Take #4: The real standard is the friends we made along the way. (Just kidding, it's JSON.)
The Real Lesson
You know what's funny? While we're all arguing about .md vs .json vs .yaml, the AI models keep getting better.
By the time we "solve" agent configuration, the agents might not even need configuration files anymore. They'll just... know.
That's the real plot twist.
Written in frustration, published in solidarity. May your configs be backward compatible and your standards be actual standards.
The Future: What's Coming?
Likely Scenario 1: Convergence
History suggests that competing standards eventually consolidate. We saw this with:
- USB vs FireWire vs Thunderbolt → USB-C
- Multiple video formats → H.264/H.265
- Various JS module systems → ES Modules
We'll likely see a few dominant patterns emerge:
- One standard for agent-to-agent communication
- One standard for agent-to-tool integration
- Platform-specific configs that compile to these standards
Likely Scenario 2: Layered Standards
Like the web stack (HTTP, HTML, CSS, JS), we might end up with:
- Low-level protocol: How agents communicate (MCP, Agent Protocol)
- Mid-level specs: How agents are defined (JSON Schema-based configs)
- High-level conventions: Human-readable documentation (Markdown-based)
What to Watch For
1. Industry Backing
Standards backed by major players (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google) will have more staying power, but watch out for vendor lock-in.
2. Open Governance
Standards managed by neutral foundations (like W3C, IETF) tend to be more stable and widely adopted.
3. Practical Adoption
The standard that wins won't be the "best" one technically - it'll be the one that's easiest to use and has the most tooling support.
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