agents-md-steward

AGENTS.md Steward

Goal

Keep agent instruction networks concise, current, scoped, and behavior-changing. Prefer pruning, routing, and clearer ownership over adding another rule.

Boundary

Do not use this skill for ordinary code edits, test fixes, reviews, or docs work unless agent-facing instruction files are being created, edited, audited, or routed.

First Move

1. Inspect the active instruction surfaces before editing:
   • root AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md, CODEX.md, or equivalent;
   • nested files that apply to the changed paths;
   • existing skills or scripts that may already own the workflow.
2. Name the intended behavior change in one sentence.
3. Decide the smallest durable home:
   • root instructions for repo-wide invariants;
   • nested instructions for path-local ownership, boundaries, commands, or gotchas;
   • a skill for reusable workflows or conditional procedures;
   • specs/issues/docs for temporary planning, narrative, history, or context.

Edit Rules

• Use exact owner, path, command, and boundary names. Replace generic quality words like "thorough", "detailed", "clean", "robust", or "easy to read" with observable checks, or delete the sentence.
• Keep only instructions that change agent behavior. Remove generic advice that competent coding agents already know.
• Prefer attractors over long prohibition lists. Use repellors only for common, costly failure modes.
• Remove narration, provenance, experiment history, old roadmap language, session recap, and model/tool anecdotes from instruction files.
• Keep root instructions short enough to scan. Move local detail down to nested instruction files or into skills.
• Do not duplicate the same rule across root, nested files, and skills. Keep the broad invariant at root and the operational procedure in the owner surface.
• Do not promote memory or learnings entries into root or nested instruction files automatically. Each promotion must pass classification and earn its always-loaded cost.
• Do not create a new nested instruction file unless a path has distinct rules that future agents cannot reliably infer from code and existing guidance.
• When a refactor, test, command, or owner-local doc would remove the need for a rule, prefer that over growing the instruction network.

Classification

Classify proposed guidance before writing:

Kind	Home
Repo-wide invariant	Root instruction file
Path ownership, public surface, commands, local gotcha	Nearest nested instruction file
Repeatable workflow, decision routing, external reference procedure	Skill
Temporary plan, roadmap, implementation state	Spec or issue
Historical explanation or rationale	Ordinary docs or decision record, only if durable
Durable personal learning or recurring correction, not repo-invariant	Memory store, only with explicit user authorization and dedupe against existing entries
Generic advice, recap, agent shorthand, stale process	Delete

New File Gate

Suggest a new AGENTS.md only when at least one condition holds:

• repeated wrong-path edits or imports show the current network does not route agents correctly;
• a subtree has a distinct public surface, command menu, or safety invariant;
• local behavior is non-obvious and expensive to rediscover;
• the rule would be too noisy at root and too important to leave implicit.

If none hold, improve the existing owner file, skill, test, or code boundary.

Validation

For guidance-only edits, run:

git diff --check

Also run targeted stale-language searches for:

• removed filenames, specs, commands, or modules;
• generic no-op quality words such as "thorough", "detailed", "clean", "robust", "easy to read", and "best practices";
• agent shorthand, model names, experiment/provenance terms, and old roadmap labels;
• duplicate copies of newly routed rules.

Report what moved, what was deleted, and why the remaining guidance earns its space.

References

When shaping or auditing an instruction network, apply the shared principles in references/source-principles.md and these primary sources:

• Claude Code — Write an effective CLAUDE.md
• OpenAI Codex — AGENTS.md guide
• AGENTS.md project — agents.md

Use those sources to keep guidance tactical, project-specific, and free of generic advice, historical narrative, and behavior attractors that do not match repo intent.