A good AGENTS.md is a model upgrade. A bad one is worse than no docs at all

2026-04-23

Much of the content in AGENTS.md files is often unhelpful or even detrimental. Effective patterns are specific and learnable, and this post explores which patterns succeed, which fail, and how to differentiate them for a given codebase. Different patterns impact different metrics, so selecting patterns that address the actual problem is crucial.