AGENTS.md and CLAUDE.md
Files in a repository with the rules a coding agent reads at the start of every session.
They hold what a new colleague would need: how to build and test, conventions, what not to touch, where things live. AGENTS.md is the cross-tool convention; CLAUDE.md is read by Claude Code. They are loaded every time, so length costs tokens and attention.
Related terms
- Agent Skills: Folders with instructions, scripts and references that an agent loads only when the task needs them.
- Hooks: Scripts the harness runs automatically at fixed points, such as before a tool call or after an edit.
- Context engineering: Deciding what goes into the model’s context, in what order and when, across a whole task.
