The consensus, in order of how much they write about it mostly: architecture and repo layout, how to test, build commands, dos-and-don'ts, PR etiquette, and code style.
The surprise was tone, and the lack of non-technical constraints.
90% write in must/always/never, and there are 784 explicit "don't" bullets, most of them oddly specific.
It's almost like you can tell exactly which mistake an agent made in each repo.
Some are hilarious: "Do not claim that an interrupted or timed-out test passed" takes the gold for me.
The shortest is 35 words, one rule from Neovim.
> AI Disclosure: If AI was used in any way for a commit, add an AI-assisted: <tool name> trailer to the commit message. If the user commits manually, remind them to add it.
The most popular headings by far were: testing, commands, project overview, and architecture
There's a lot more interesting deets like the average length, nextjs' "Do NOT add "Generated with Claude Code" ..."
Author here.
The consensus, in order of how much they write about it mostly: architecture and repo layout, how to test, build commands, dos-and-don'ts, PR etiquette, and code style.
The surprise was tone, and the lack of non-technical constraints.
90% write in must/always/never, and there are 784 explicit "don't" bullets, most of them oddly specific.
It's almost like you can tell exactly which mistake an agent made in each repo.
Some are hilarious: "Do not claim that an interrupted or timed-out test passed" takes the gold for me.
The shortest is 35 words, one rule from Neovim.
> AI Disclosure: If AI was used in any way for a commit, add an AI-assisted: <tool name> trailer to the commit message. If the user commits manually, remind them to add it.
The most popular headings by far were: testing, commands, project overview, and architecture
There's a lot more interesting deets like the average length, nextjs' "Do NOT add "Generated with Claude Code" ..."
Is your AGENTS.md very different to these?