AGENTS.md is the wrong conversation

AGENTS.md started as a simple way to guide coding agents, but many teams are discovering that a default or poorly written one can actually make agents worse. Obvious facts, vague rules, outdated guidance, and generic instructions often confuse models more than they help.

But manually crafting it won’t cut it once teams and organizations enter the picture. Because a single static file stops being enough. Agents need a harness that guides how they interpret context, what knowledge applies where, and which decisions carry authority. In this talk we’ll explore why effective agent systems require structured context, hierarchy, and memory — and how building that harness is the real challenge of making AI agents work reliably inside engineering organizations.