Story · r/AI_Agents
What the 100 biggest GitHub repos put in their AGENTS.md files (r/AI_Agents)
Reddit thread · Story page
One person read the AGENTS.md files of the 100 most-starred repos that have one and found 784 explicit prohibitions, with 90% written in must, always, never. The files read like institutional memory of agent mistakes, one oddly specific rule at a time.
In plain words
- One person reviewed instruction files from 100 popular software projects and found they mainly cover structure, testing, build steps, behavior, review rules, and coding style.
- These files tell action-taking artificial intelligence systems how to work within each project and avoid recurring mistakes.
- Across the files, 90% used forceful words such as must, always, or never, while the reviewer counted 784 explicit prohibitions.
- Software teams can preserve lessons from past automated mistakes by recording precise rules for future work.
Appeared in
- Poisoned agent memory beats screening, and prompt rules keep failing as boundaries
Aug 25, 2026 · in the sections
Subscribe
Get the brief in your inbox
Pick daily, weekly, or both. Nothing is gated either way: every issue is on the site and in the feeds.
- Weekdays at 8:45am IST, one lead story and 6 to 9 items.
- Sundays, an argued synthesis rather than a recap.
- One click to leave, and quiet days say so in the subject line.