AGENTS.md
A README for your coding agent, in one file at the repo root.
AGENTS.md is a plain Markdown file you put at the root of a repository to tell a coding agent how to work on it: how to install and run the project, how to run the tests, what the code style is, what a pull request should look like. A README is for people and stays short; this is the detail an agent needs and a human contributor would skim past. There are no required fields — write whatever headings you like, since the agent just reads the text. In a monorepo you can put one in each package, and an agent uses the nearest file to whatever it is editing. The format came out of a joint effort across OpenAI Codex, Cursor, Amp, Jules and Factory rather than one vendor, is now stewarded by the Agentic AI Foundation under the Linux Foundation, and is in well over sixty thousand open-source repositories. Claude Code reads it too, but only in a folder with no CLAUDE.md — if you have both, the CLAUDE.md is the one being read.
Pairs well with
Works with
Key info
- Pricing
- Free
- Category
- Utilities
- Best for
- Beginner
- What it is
- An AGENTS.md file at your repository root, in plain Markdown
- Usually holds
- Setup and build commands, how to run tests, code style, PR rules
- Required fields
- None — any headings you like
- Monorepos
- One per package; the agent uses the nearest file
- Read by
- Codex, Cursor, Copilot's coding agent, Gemini CLI, Jules, Zed, Aider, Devin and more
- Claude Code
- Reads it only where there is no CLAUDE.md in the folder
- Stewarded by
- The Agentic AI Foundation, under the Linux Foundation
Related reading
- Context engineering
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Intermediate1 min read · 44 views