[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47034087
Paper was discussed here 4 months ago, and the linked tweet on this post doesn't add any insights and completely misses the huge caveats that come with the found result: the main benefits of using AGENTS.md files are inherently opposed to the characteristics of _median_ "public github project that has an AGENTS.md file".
Yeah it was a good discussion. I'm definitely on the side of "a well written agents.md is very good for the agent". The file should not be static. The agents.md from a year ago is not the right agents.md for today. Many of them are overly long, overly instructive, and include a lot of unccessary code bits.
I think it's useful for people using agent harness to regularly evaluate your skills, agent rules, and memory implementation to ensure there's no conflict across them all. Also, best to rely as little as possible on the agent to write its own agents.md.
It can be be tedious, but that's why agentic coding can still be considered a "skill".