Story · arXiv
Evaluating AGENTS.md: Are Repository-Level Context Files Helpful for Coding Agents? (arXiv)
paper · Story page
On SWE-bench tasks and on issues from repositories that ship their own context files, providing one generally didn't raise task success and added over 20% to inference cost. Instructions got followed; the repository overviews providers recommend didn't help.
In plain words
- Researchers found that extra written guidance generally did not help artificial intelligence tools write or fix computer programs more successfully.
- These tools read files inside a software project for instructions about how to work on it.
- They followed the instructions, but descriptions of how the project was organized did not help.
- For software teams, these files made the tools over 20% more expensive to run on average in the study.
Appeared in
- A forged chat-template marker loses most of its authority as ordinary subwords
Oct 01, 2026 · in the sections
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