We split this AGENTS.md into the rules it gives an agent

28 rules. About 0 are common, 24 are distinctive, and 4 are very specific to this project.

• ≈0

  Common · estimate

  Many files like this have a rule of this kind.

• ≈24

  Distinctive · estimate

  This author's own choices. Worth a look.

• 4

  Very specific

  Tied to their project's names, files or tools. Probably skip.

• Common
• Distinctive
• Very specific

1. Distinctive:

   Keep this file short and behavioral.

   line 3
2. Distinctive:

   Do not keep historical artifacts that no longer explain or protect current behavior.

   line 11
3. Distinctive:

   Prefer a single stable contract with one real owner.

   line 12
4. Distinctive:

   Prefer local simplicity over premature or speculative abstraction.

   line 13
5. Distinctive:

   Add indirection only when it removes real coupling or protects a real boundary.

   line 14
6. Distinctive:

   Do not generalize a one-off problem by default.

   line 16
7. Distinctive:

   Keep a regression test when the regression reveals a contract or invariant that remains important.

   line 18
8. Distinctive:

   Do not test incidental implementation details such as call sequence, log output, retry count, or file metadata unless they are themselves …

   line 19
9. Distinctive:

   When a refactor makes an implementation-coupled test obsolete, delete it if no enduring behavior or invariant would be left unprotected.

   line 20
10. Very specific:

    Prefer deterministic unit tests at the lowest coherent owner, or real black-box E2E tests in e2e/.

    line 21
11. Distinctive:

    Never add a production callback, interface, config knob, wrapper, synchronization primitive, or injection seam only to make a test possible.

    line 22
12. Very specific:

    When a regression crosses components, protect the enduring invariant in its lowest owner.

    line 23
13. Distinctive:

    When caller and callee are both local and no real boundary exists, change both directly.

    line 27
14. Distinctive:

    If a field, method, wrapper, or abstraction has no clear, current use and does not protect a real boundary, remove it immediately.

    line 28
15. Distinctive:

    No wrapper functions or helpers unless they remove real coupling, protect a real boundary, or represent independently meaningful behavior.

    line 29
16. Distinctive:

    Prefer changing existing code directly when the change remains local.

    line 30
17. Distinctive:

    Prefer direct code over layers, facades, and indirection when the extra structure would outgrow the problem it solves.

    line 31
18. Distinctive:

    Prefer existing ownership and serialization over adding synchronization unless concurrency itself is part of the problem being modeled.

    line 32
19. Distinctive:

    Prefer flattening and merging nearby responsibilities over splitting by default.

    line 33
20. Distinctive:

    Remove dead fields, methods, config, and stale state while touching nearby code.

    line 34
21. Distinctive:

    Do not duplicate normalization, validation, or defaulting logic.

    line 35
22. Very specific:

    Keep shared stateless transforms in utils/.

    line 36
23. Very specific:

    Keep stable shared contracts, constants, and public paths in types/, not in runtime or helpers.

    line 37
24. Distinctive:

    Use ADRs sparingly for stable, long-lived architecture or compatibility decisions.

    line 40
25. Distinctive:

    Keep ordinary refactors, migrations, rejected approaches, and temporary implementation decisions in issues and pull requests unless they …

    line 41
26. Distinctive:

    Remove stale or superseded documentation that no longer helps explain the current system or its supported compatibility constraints.

    line 42
27. Distinctive:

    Run tests only when explicitly requested.

    line 48
28. Distinctive:

    If verification seems necessary, ask before running it.

    line 49

≈ “Common” is an estimate: at least 1 in 5 of the 36,368 AGENTS.md files we read have a rule of the same kind, not the same words. “Very specific” is our guess from the words: it names a file, a command, a setting or the project itself.

• Other versions1 project uses a version of this.

  Word for word · 1

  1. gosuda/portal-tunnel★ 293100% same

  Edited · 0

  None found.

  Wrote their own version · 0

  None found.

  How matches are found. Word for word: the exact same text. Edited: shares passages with this file (“99% same” means 99% of its five-word phrases also appear here; 10% or more counts). Their own version: similar meaning, or, weakest, the same name. We can’t tell which project had it first. Projects are counted among the 200 most-starred candidates, and mentions are links to the repository we found, up to 50 per site, so both counts are a floor.

• Where files are headingNew AGENTS.md files have more rules about keeping secrets out of the code, and fewer about code style.

  Of the AGENTS.md files we read, the 28,693 first seen in the last six months, against the older ones: the kind of rule that gained most share, and the kind that lost most. About files like this in general, not this one, and an estimate, since a kind is a pattern in the words.

• In this repository2 other files it gives its agents.

  • frontend/AGENTS.mdAGENTS.md
  • llms.txtllms.txt