It's insane to me that the "fix" for AI errors is adding more "PLEASE PLEASE DO BETTER" to the prompt

If it makes you feel any better, the Markdown part is optional (and has no semantics). Somehow it feels about right that the Markdown file can actually just be a YAML file with the wrong extension.

(Actually, to be more specific, a YAML file with no directives, explicitly-signalled start-of-document-content, and followed by a second null document. I will note that frontmatter syntax is not specified; the non-normative Appendix B is the only place that suggests it means prefix and suffix --- lines. And no, frontmatter is not part of Markdown, or CommonMark, and is in fact incompatible with both. And it’s invalid YAML too, the end-of-frontmatter line should be ... to indicate end of document without starting a new document.)

QUALITY.md feels similar to CONSTITUTION.md

Looks like unless something better comes up, we'll be stuck with it for a while.

I find markdown useful for repo-specific conventions, especially skills.

it's looking like llms are interpreters, and markdown plus english text is the language of choice to run non deterministic programs on it

I thought the same about Yaml and Kubernetes/Helm…

It already refuses to read the AGENT.md/CLAUDE.md files, what's the point of giving it even more markdown it won't read until you yell at it.

it is until we define real consistent deterministic gates and protocols. It really is a symptom of the lack of concerted effort. Everyone has a personal preference on how to shove the context and most of them are just "here's some good text I've found to work in my context"