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meta: add a root-level AGENTS.md - #65493

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meta: add a root-level AGENTS.md#65493
jasnell wants to merge 3 commits into
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jasnell:jasnell/agents-md

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@jasnell

@jasnell jasnell commented Aug 22, 2026

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We're seeing a number of repeated mistakes in AI-generated contributions, including agents using Signed-off-by, creating what appear to be unsupervised PRs, appearing to respond to comments without human oversight, etc. Having an AGENTS.md file with specific instructions to the agent on what to avoid should help.

@jasnell
jasnell requested a review from a team August 22, 2026 23:03
@nodejs-github-bot nodejs-github-bot added doc Issues and PRs related to the documentations. meta Issues and PRs related to the general management of the project. labels Aug 22, 2026
@jasnell
jasnell force-pushed the jasnell/agents-md branch from ed9ce39 to 37e80dd Compare August 22, 2026 23:07
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@jasnell jasnell added the commit-queue-squash Add this label to instruct the Commit Queue to squash all the PR commits into the first one. label Aug 22, 2026
@jasnell jasnell added the author ready PRs that have at least one approval, no outstanding review comments, and a CI started. label Aug 23, 2026
@cjihrig
cjihrig requested a review from BethGriggs August 23, 2026 00:35
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There is an ealier PR for AGENTS.md: #65463

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MikeMcC399

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@joyeecheung

joyeecheung commented Aug 23, 2026

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The document uses a tone as if it's speaking to a human, even though it is not supposed to be read by human? e.g. the distinction of collaborators or non-collaborators is pointless to an agent unless you give it permisssions where the distinction makes a difference, but then the document goes on saying the agent shouldn't use any of these permissions, which means the agent is not supposed to make use of that distinction in the first place.

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@jasnell
jasnell requested a review from mcollina August 23, 2026 20:35
@jasnell

jasnell commented Aug 23, 2026

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The document uses a tone as if it's speaking to a human, even though it is not supposed to be read by human? e.g. the distinction of collaborators or non-collaborators is pointless to an agent unless you give it permisssions where the distinction makes a difference, but then the document goes on saying the agent shouldn't use any of these permissions, which means the agent is not supposed to make use of that distinction in the first place.

Agents are perfectly capable of correctly interpretting it as written.

image

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@jasnell
jasnell force-pushed the jasnell/agents-md branch from 61a0ad7 to 4d13dde Compare August 24, 2026 13:31
@jasnell

jasnell commented Aug 24, 2026

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Applied formatting.

We're seeing a number of repeated mistakes in AI-generated
contributions, including agents using `Signed-off-by`, creating
what appear to be unsupervised PRs, appearing to respond to
comments without human oversight, etc. Having an AGENTS.md
file with specific instructions to the agent on what to avoid
should help.

Signed-off-by: James M Snell <jasnell@gmail.com>
@jasnell
jasnell force-pushed the jasnell/agents-md branch from 4d13dde to b59d0ab Compare August 24, 2026 13:34
@jasnell

jasnell commented Aug 24, 2026

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@mcollina are you satisfied with the updates enough to clear your "request changes"?

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jasnell and others added 2 commits August 24, 2026 07:10
Co-authored-by: Antoine du Hamel <duhamelantoine1995@gmail.com>
Co-authored-by: Antoine du Hamel <duhamelantoine1995@gmail.com>
@BethGriggs

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It might be worth adding some instructions relating to scanning for vulnerabilities and drafting security reports too, but that could be a follow-up so not to derail this landing.

@codecov

codecov Bot commented Aug 24, 2026

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Codecov Report

✅ All modified and coverable lines are covered by tests.
✅ Project coverage is 90.16%. Comparing base (46a7dbd) to head (30617f6).
⚠️ Report is 2 commits behind head on main.

Additional details and impacted files
@@            Coverage Diff             @@
##             main   #65493      +/-   ##
==========================================
- Coverage   90.21%   90.16%   -0.05%     
==========================================
  Files         751      751              
  Lines      253550   253550              
  Branches    47813    47764      -49     
==========================================
- Hits       228733   228615     -118     
- Misses      16076    16194     +118     
  Partials     8741     8741              

see 31 files with indirect coverage changes

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