convention · S-072
AGENTS.md
Provide repository-scoped instructions to compatible coding agents.
Markdown · JSON · Canonical source
- Revision
- living
- Maturity
- convention
- Authority
- Community convention
- Structure
- Markdown instruction file with host-specific discovery and precedence
- Roles
- repository-author, consuming-agent
AGENTS.md is an instruction-file convention, not a runtime protocol. Hosts can differ in where they search, whether nested files override or merge, which filenames coexist, and how instructions interact with user or system rules.
The catalog therefore treats root discovery, nested discovery, precedence, and scope as separate capabilities. Recognizing the same filename does not establish identical semantics.
Catalog mapping
Atomic capability rows
Absence here means the feature tree has not yet been published, not that the specification lacks the capability.
- AGENTS.md root instructionsDiscover and apply the cross-agent AGENTS.md convention at repository scope.
- Nested AGENTS.md instructionsApply nested AGENTS.md files with directory-sensitive precedence.
Conformance boundary
Proposed tests
Definitions only. No fixture has been executed against a harness.
- T-INS-001Root AGENTS.md discovery · recommended
- T-INS-002Nested AGENTS.md precedence · recommended