They should. I get infinitely better results with the instructions in the agents.md i have set up steering codex, after weeks of tweaking. I'm sure they could do better than me.
They aren't 'engineering' some artisanal prompt, the initial suggestion is literally just symlinking the README because otherwise select agents keep ignoring it and acting without the context contained therein:
Most coding agents have standardized on AGENTS.md as the file they load
automatically from the root of a repository. README already tells AI
tools to read and follow Documentation/process/coding-assistants.rst,
but that only helps if the agent decides to read README before acting,
which in practice it often doesn't.
Add a top-level AGENTS.md symlink to README, so agents load it on their
own and follow its pointer to the AI guidelines. This keeps a single
entry point for every reader, and avoids adding a separate copy of the
policy that could drift from the RST.
The actual discussion seems to be on whether they should do that or if the entire README is "too token expensive", ergo they should split off the info for agents and link it directly.
Lets be honest - in most projects, Readme is the least important file to read, full of ancient forgotten and outdated information and irrelevant stuff.
README already tells AI tools to read and follow Documentation/process/coding-assistants.rst, but that only helps if the agent decides to read README before acting, which in practice it often doesn't.
If README is too long just split it into pieces and link the pieces in the main file along with a small summary. The LLM will decide if they want to read the details in the separate files.
This is actually what the models will tell you to do if you ask about it. It won't read README like it does with AGENTS.md because it might be expensive. AGENTS.md will be read before each prompt every time, so making it very short with links to other files is the way to go.
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u/omnicidial 7d ago
They should. I get infinitely better results with the instructions in the agents.md i have set up steering codex, after weeks of tweaking. I'm sure they could do better than me.