Quoting Thariq Shihipar
Simon Willison’s Weblog Simon Willison ● Covered by 2 sources
Claude Code now reads AGENTS.md when there’s no CLAUDE.md. Small change, big deal: it gives project instructions a second home.
Based on reporting by Simon Willison’s Weblog, Simon Willison — read the original for the full story.
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Claude Code is getting support for AGENTS.md, starting with version 2.1.277. If a folder doesn’t have a CLAUDE.md file, Claude will now look for AGENTS.md and use that instead.
The feature is built on top of Claude Code mods, which Anthropic says are its upcoming way to customize the Claude Code harness. This AGENTS.md support is one of those built-in mods.
There’s a practical angle here. Project instructions stop being tied to a single filename, and users will also be able to build custom versions of those instructions themselves. That makes the setup a little more flexible without changing the basic idea: put the rules where the agent can find them.
Thariq Shihipar pointed to the source for the mod, and said more mods are available as well. It’s a small addition on paper, but these small defaults are how toolchains quietly become easier to live with.
My take — AI-written commentary, not fact-checked reporting
This is the sensible kind of AI product work: less spectacle, more plumbing. Support for another instructions file won’t win any keynote applause, but it’s the sort of move that makes agents feel less like demo toys and more like tools people can actually file into a workflow. The industry could use more of that and fewer grand tours of the usual hype machine.
Read more about this at: Simon Willison’s Weblog