Summary
AGENTS.md is “a simple, open format for guiding coding agents.” It is a plain Markdown file at a repository’s root carrying the context that doesn’t belong in a human-facing README — setup and test commands, code style, security considerations. It has no required fields; the closest file to the edited code wins, and an explicit user instruction overrides everything. Adoption spans tens of thousands of repositories and most major coding-agent tools.
How it fits
AGENTS.md moves the agent-readable web standards pattern from the site level to the repository level: an operator-authored, well-known-path file that a machine reader honors. It is notable for being the first of the family to move to a neutral, vendor-independent home — the Agentic AI Foundation under the Linux Foundation — the way the W3C hosts HTML and CSS.
Why it matters here
AGENTS.md is the repository-scope sibling of llms.txt and the bridge to Interpretable Context Methodology, which generalizes file-native context delivery from the web to the workspace. It is part of the protocol surface of the Independent Internet.
Part of the AP0110.ORG source library. See the wiki overview.
Full source text: read the original document.