Claude Code reads AGENTS.md only when telemetry is on [fixed]

In one line

Claude Code 2.1.277 added AGENTS.md support, but the loader sits behind a remote feature flag. With telemetry or nonessential traffic turned off, a local AGENTS.md is skipped without a warning. This is what I measured and the one-line CLAUDE.md I use instead.

Opening excerpt

Claude Code 2.1.277 announced support for AGENTS.md . In a project with no CLAUDE.md , it is supposed to read AGENTS.md instead. I keep telemetry off in my shell, and in my repos the file never loaded. Issue #95690 explains why, and I added my own measurements to it. This post collects them in one place.

The loader ships as a built-in plugin called agents-md . Its registration in the 2.1.280 bundle looks like this:

var W = ! 1 ; var B = () => Oa ( “tengu_agents_md_mod” , W ); var H = “AGENTS.md as project instructions: by default loaded where the project has no CLAUDE.md; …” ; W is the plugin’s isOnByDefault value and it is false . B is isAvailable , and it asks a remote feature flag called tengu_agents_md_mod , with false as the fallback. When Claude Code cannot fetch the flag, the plugin is unavailable, and the local file is never read. Reading a markdown file from the working directory needs no network at all, but here it waits on a server-side switch.

I made an empty directory that holds only an AGENTS.md with a canary word in it, and asked claude -p for the word.

(Excerpted from the original; full article via the source link below.)

This story hit the Hacker News front page today (426 points / 238 comments, via blog.szypowi.cz). Our Tech Radar aggregates daily signals on AI engineering, backend architecture and DevOps — browse the related services and further reading below, or get in touch with our team.