AGENTS.md vs CLAUDE.md, tested on 13 repos


AGENTS.md vs CLAUDE.md, tested on 13 repos
12 of mine load it. One never did, and I didn't notice for a month.  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌
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AGENTS.md vs CLAUDE.md, tested on 13 repos

Hey there,

I have 13 repos that carry both an AGENTS.md and a CLAUDE.md. This week I checked how each one wires them together, expecting 13 identical answers.

Twelve import AGENTS.md on line one of CLAUDE.md. One asks the agent, in a sentence, to please go read it. That one holds 6,479 bytes of branch rules and load-bearing invariants that load only if the agent decides to.

AGENTS.md vs CLAUDE.md: which file your agent actually reads

AGENTS.md vs CLAUDE.md – a document the height of a building, and the one glowing line at the top that decides whether any of it loads

Every guide explains the difference between the two files. None of them runs the test, so I did: same author, same month, two wiring mechanisms, and only one of them is deterministic. The fix is one line. The more useful part is why nothing caught it for a month, and why my own first audit got the count wrong – it checked line one, reported two broken repos, and only one was. If you keep rules in a file and your agent still ignores them, this is probably where they went.

Read the measured comparison →


Reply and tell me what your line one says. I read every reply.

– Alex

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