Glossary term
Glossary term
Agentic Systems
An emerging open format for repository-level instructions used by software agents and coding assistants.
OpenAI's Codex and GitHub Copilot Workspace read AGENTS.md files at repository root to learn build commands, test instructions, and architectural constraints before making any changes.
Anthropic's Claude Code checks for AGENTS.md and CLAUDE.md files to load project-specific context - a SaaS startup uses it to define 'never edit migrations directly', 'run pytest before committing', 'use Poetry not pip'.
A fintech team added AGENTS.md specifying forbidden files (secrets.env), required test coverage (>80%), preferred patterns (DI over singleton), and escalation instructions - reducing AI coding errors by 60%.