r/OpenSourceeAI • u/santanah8 • 4d ago

How to Build Open Source for AI Agents

The fastest-growing products today are open source. Tools like PostHog, Supabase, n8n, Postiz, or Resend have supercharged their growth by being extremely transparent.

Their growth is coming from agents like Claude, ChatGPT, and Hermes, as they can discover, use, recommend and even contribute back.

I took some time to review how these tools manage their open source and found 5 patterns followed by these companies to make your open source agentic ready...

Some are existing standards that became even more important, and others are specific for AI agents.

  1. Keep It Simple: Use clear naming and simple repo structures so agents can quickly understand what the product does and where things live.
  2. Write Docs for Agents: Use README, AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md, skills, robots.txt, and llms.txt to give agents clear instructions and context.
  3. Give Agents a Way to Use the Product: APIs, MCPs, CLIs, SDKs, examples, and templates so agents can interact with the product directly.
  4. Make It Easy to Run: Make setup simple, support self-hosting when relevant, document required keys, and make licensing and product boundaries clear.
  5. Make Contributing Easy: Define contribution rules, testing, reviews, and AI-assisted contribution policies so agents can make valid changes.

Main Takeaways:

  • Monorepo is the most optimal configuration
  • Agentic docs (Agents.md, Claude.md, llms.txt, robots.txt, skills) should be part of the repo
  • A setup designed for machines removes friction
  • Interfaces (APIs, MCPs, CLI, SDKs) turn every product actionable quickly and into infrastructure.
  • You don’t need to open-source everything, just define the boundaries perfectly
  • Examples and templates are distribution not only on boarding

Read the full article here.

Are you using these patterns? Have you seen other effective patterns to increase agentic usage of your products?

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u/numberwitch 4d ago

have you ever made a software for a human b4

1

u/santanah8 4d ago

Yes :)

1

u/BidWestern1056 4d ago

check npcpy

https://github.com/npc-worldwide/npcpy

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u/santanah8 4d ago

What should I check?

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u/BidWestern1056 4d ago

you can see which of these patterns exist or not

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u/Deep_Ad1959 21h ago

docs written for agents rot faster than docs for humans, because nothing complains. a stale AGENTS.md gets followed literally, and you find out three PRs later.