Agent-specific guidance like this rubs me the wrong way as well. The SoTA coding agents shouldn't need this much babysitting IMO. There are valid things that are not code that should be a part of the repository, like code formatting preferences (but ideally as linter rules the agent can just run, not prose), information about structuring of the code base (but as CONTRIBUTING.md or something else human-centric which the agent should pick up), documentation (either as source or as a link, again, not agent-centric) etc. I might be blanking on something that is truly agent-only and doesn't fit in a human-centric document or location better, but even if I am, that should be a minimal amount of instructions compared to what should go into the human-centric prose in the code base and be more widely valuable than just for the agent.

Fair point, but if it's minimal and useful for agents, I'm okay with it.

Humans and AIs have different weak spots: we can infer intent from convention, but an AI often struggles unless you spell it out. Ignoring that gap just to keep things "purely human" feels counterproductive. Agents deserve some sympathy.

In my opinion an AGENTS.md file isn't an artifact at all (in the sense of being a checked-in part of the codebase), it's part of the prompt. You should gitignore them and use them to give the LLM a brief overview of the things that matter to your work and the requests you are making.

The entire point of AGI maybe. But until we get that, if it's useful then people can do it.