I strongly disagree. It is extremely annoying when I cannot make different agents read a different prompt file when I needed to tell them different things. Cursor currently autoloads AGENTS.md without a way to disable it and it sucks.
I use symbolic links, and Claude Code often gets confused, requiring several iterations to understand that the CLAUDE.md file is actually a symbolic link to AGENTS.md, and that these are not two different, duplicate files
The recommended approach has the advantage of separating information specific to Claude Code, but I think that in the long run, Anthropic will have to adopt the AGENTS.md format
Also, when using separate files, memories will be written to CLAUDE.md, and periodic triaging will be required: deciding what to leave there and what to move to AGENTS.md
I'm still not 100% sure I understand what a symlink in a git repository actually does, especially across different operating systems. Maybe it's fine?
Anthropic say "put @AGENTS.md in your CLAUDE.md" file and my own experiments confirmed that this dumps the content into the system prompt in the same way as if you had copied it to CLAUDE.md manually, so I'm happy with that solution - at least until Anthropic give in and support AGENTS.md directly.
In my experience, neither Claude nor any other agent actually reads AGENTS.md (or CLAUDE.md or anything else) without being told to explicitly every session.
I've sniffed Claude Code's HTTP traffic and confirmed that the CLAUDE.md file content (and AGENTS.md if it is @-referenced) is automatically included in the system prompt without it having to perform any additional file read operations.
> Instead of a bloated API, an MCP should be a simple, secure gateway that provides a few powerful, high-level tools [...] In this model, MCP’s job isn’t to abstract reality for the agent; its job is to manage the auth, networking, and security boundaries and then get out of the way.
Thanks! I def don't think I would have guessed this use case when MCP first came out, but more and more it seems Claude just yearns for scripting on data rather than a bunch of "tools". My/MCPs job has become just getting it that data.
Have you tried using light CLIs rather than MCP? I’ve found that CLIs are just easier for Claude, especially if you write them with Claude and during planning instruct it to think about adding guidance to users who get confused.
Our auth, log diving, infra state, etc, is all usable via cli, and it feels pretty good when pointing Claude at it.
This is how MCP works if you use it for as essential an internal tool API gateway (stateless http) instead of a client facing service that end users are connecting directly to. It's basically just OpenAPI but slightly more tuned for LLM inference.
Agreed. My only MCP is a code interpreter. I also recently started experimenting with making an MCP “proxy” which acts a better harness that lets the agent call MCP from within a code interpreter [1]
But in general I still don’t really use MCP. Agents are just so good at solving problems themselves. I wish MCP would mostly focus at the auth part instead of the tool part. Getting an agent access to an API with credentials usually gives them enough power to solve problems on their own.
At this point these tools are all pretty good. I also feel like folks often also over index on the output style or UI. Like to me the “you’re absolutely right!” sycophancy isn’t a notable bug; it’s a signal that you’re too in-the-loop. Generally my goal is to “shoot and forget”—to delegate, set the context, and let it work. Judging the tool by the final PR and not how it gets there.
I use LLM tools daily and my experience is that this just does not work on an application of any meaningful size or complexity.
You're going to immediately be overwhelmed with code, comments, markdown files, and all manner of extra text that may or may not solve your problem. The chore then becomes PR reviews of tons of iffy code, and if you merge too much of it, after too long your codebase will be a bloated mess that even the craftiest prompts won't untangle.
It's best to use to brainstorm and implement very targeted prompts, set and forget is crazy.
I have the same instinctive response to reading AI generated stuff, but I'm coming to a more moderate position where I'm trying to judge the content on the content itself. For example, in a post like this, it doesn't bother me at all because it's still an extremely useful reference, and the author clearly read through, organized, and edited the output. This is a good example of usage of AI in my opinion.
The people who just copy paste output from ai and ship it as a blog post however, deserve significant condemnation for that.
Writing is a tool for thought I feel, and when you're outsourcing your thought, it detracts from whatever you intended to say. I guess if it was that heavily-edited such a telltale sign wouldn't have remained.
I use AI for code, but I never use it for any writing that is for human eyes.
Nothing there implies I was forced. I read the whole thing. It was not disclosed that it was written (in part?) by AI. And That sentence I quoted was pretty far along.
> /clear + /catchup (Simple Restart): My default reboot. I /clear the state, then run a custom /catchup command to make Claude read all changed files in my git branch.
I've found myself doing similar workarounds. I'm guessing anthropic will just make the /compact command do this instead soon enough.
I've found the latency of /compact makes it unusable. Perhaps this is just the result of my waiting until I have 0% context remaining.
Fun fact, a large chunk of context is reserved for compaction. When you are shown that you have "0% context remaining," it's actually like 30% remaining that's reserved for compaction.
And yet, for some reason I feel like 50% of the time, compaction fails because it runs out of context or hits (non-rate) API limits.
Weirdly, I’ve found that when that happens I can close Claude and then run `claude --continue` and now it has room to compact. Makes no sense.
But I have no idea what state it will be in after compact, so it’s better to ask it to write a complete and thorough report including what source files to read. Lot more work but better than going off the rails.
Kinda sad if 3000 words is now considered "too long to read through rather use as reference" but some interesting points, I'd be keen to see an even longer version with actual examples instead of placeholder ones.
> If you’re not already using a CLI-based agent like Claude Code or Codex CLI, you probably should be.
Are the CLI-based agents better (much better?) than the Cursor app? Why?
I like how easy it is to get Cursor to focus a particular piece of code. I select the text and Cmd-L, saying "fix this part, it's broken like this ____."
I haven't really tried a CLI agent; sending snippets of code by CLI sounds really annoying. "Fix login.ts lines 148-160, it's broken like this ___"
Yeah I started with Cursor, went hybrid, and then in the last month or so I've totally swapped over.
Part of it is the snappy more minimal UX but also just pure efficacy seems consistently better. Claude does its best work in CC. I'm sure the same is true of Codex.
Better? Hard to say. Different? Yes. Worth evaluating? Absolutely. Using it for 30 minutes will answer your question better than any reply here. I think you'll answer your own question quickly.
I've been coding seriously for about 15 years. No single tool has changed how I code more than claude code and I'm including non-"AI" tooling/services. This sounds like I'm shilling but I am not affiliated. It's played a large part in injecting my passion back into building stuff.
Really, the interface isn't a meaningful part of it. I also like cmd-L, but claude just does better at writing code.
...also, it's nice that Anthropic is just focusing on making cool stuff (like skills), while the folk from cursor are... I dunno. Whatever it is they're doing with cursor 2.0 :shrug:
Direct use of Codex + GPT5 or Claude Code CLI gives a better result, compared to using the same models in Cursor. I've compared both. Cursor applies some of their augmentation, which reduces the output size, probably to save on tokens.
Readit News
I researched this the other day, the recommended (by Anthropic) way to do this is to have a CLAUDE.md with a single line in it:
Then keep your actual content in the other file: https://docs.claude.com/en/docs/claude-code/claude-code-on-t...The recommended approach has the advantage of separating information specific to Claude Code, but I think that in the long run, Anthropic will have to adopt the AGENTS.md format
Also, when using separate files, memories will be written to CLAUDE.md, and periodic triaging will be required: deciding what to leave there and what to move to AGENTS.md
Anthropic say "put @AGENTS.md in your CLAUDE.md" file and my own experiments confirmed that this dumps the content into the system prompt in the same way as if you had copied it to CLAUDE.md manually, so I'm happy with that solution - at least until Anthropic give in and support AGENTS.md directly.
But I can’t speak to it working across OS.
> Instead of a bloated API, an MCP should be a simple, secure gateway that provides a few powerful, high-level tools [...] In this model, MCP’s job isn’t to abstract reality for the agent; its job is to manage the auth, networking, and security boundaries and then get out of the way.
Our auth, log diving, infra state, etc, is all usable via cli, and it feels pretty good when pointing Claude at it.
But in general I still don’t really use MCP. Agents are just so good at solving problems themselves. I wish MCP would mostly focus at the auth part instead of the tool part. Getting an agent access to an API with credentials usually gives them enough power to solve problems on their own.
[1]: https://x.com/mitsuhiko/status/1984756813850374578?s=46
You're going to immediately be overwhelmed with code, comments, markdown files, and all manner of extra text that may or may not solve your problem. The chore then becomes PR reviews of tons of iffy code, and if you merge too much of it, after too long your codebase will be a bloated mess that even the craftiest prompts won't untangle.
It's best to use to brainstorm and implement very targeted prompts, set and forget is crazy.
read the document at https://blog.sshh.io/p/how-i-use-every-claude-code-feature and tell me how to improve my Claude code setup
Em dash and "it's not X, it's Y" in one sentence. Tired of reading posts written by AI. Feels disrespectful to your readers
The people who just copy paste output from ai and ship it as a blog post however, deserve significant condemnation for that.
I use AI for code, but I never use it for any writing that is for human eyes.
Didn’t realize you were forced to read this?
> Feels disrespectful to your readers
I didn’t feel disrespected—I felt so respected I read the whole thing.
I've found myself doing similar workarounds. I'm guessing anthropic will just make the /compact command do this instead soon enough.
Fun fact, a large chunk of context is reserved for compaction. When you are shown that you have "0% context remaining," it's actually like 30% remaining that's reserved for compaction.
And yet, for some reason I feel like 50% of the time, compaction fails because it runs out of context or hits (non-rate) API limits.
But I have no idea what state it will be in after compact, so it’s better to ask it to write a complete and thorough report including what source files to read. Lot more work but better than going off the rails.
Are the CLI-based agents better (much better?) than the Cursor app? Why?
I like how easy it is to get Cursor to focus a particular piece of code. I select the text and Cmd-L, saying "fix this part, it's broken like this ____."
I haven't really tried a CLI agent; sending snippets of code by CLI sounds really annoying. "Fix login.ts lines 148-160, it's broken like this ___"
Part of it is the snappy more minimal UX but also just pure efficacy seems consistently better. Claude does its best work in CC. I'm sure the same is true of Codex.
https://cursor.com/blog/2-0
I've been coding seriously for about 15 years. No single tool has changed how I code more than claude code and I'm including non-"AI" tooling/services. This sounds like I'm shilling but I am not affiliated. It's played a large part in injecting my passion back into building stuff.
Really, the interface isn't a meaningful part of it. I also like cmd-L, but claude just does better at writing code.
...also, it's nice that Anthropic is just focusing on making cool stuff (like skills), while the folk from cursor are... I dunno. Whatever it is they're doing with cursor 2.0 :shrug:
The agentic part of the equation is improving on both sides all the time.
> I select the text and Cmd-L, saying "fix this part, it's broken like this
This flow works well.