AGENTS.md

Every agent setup has an AGENTS.md: Markdown instructions that apply to all your AI coding agents, such as coding conventions, project structure or how to run the tests. When you install the setup, the CLI writes this content into both AGENTS.md and CLAUDE.md in your project.

Editing AGENTS.md in Athenode

Open your agent setup in the web app and go to its AGENTS.md tab. It's a Markdown text editor with a limit of 50,000 characters.

Only editors and owners of the setup can change it. The shared default setup can't be edited, so clone it first if you want different content — see Agent Setups. You can also read and replace the content from the terminal — see the CLI page.

How the CLI writes it

When you run athenode init, or any command that regenerates your files, the CLI writes the setup's AGENTS.md content into both AGENTS.md and CLAUDE.md in your project's root directory. The content sits in a block between an Athenode start marker and an end marker, both written as Markdown comments, so the rest of each file stays yours.

• New block: if a file has no Athenode block yet, the block is added at the top of the file. If the file doesn't exist, it's created.
• Existing block: the block is replaced in place. Anything outside the markers is left exactly as it was.
• Manual edits: changes you make inside the block are overwritten on the next run. Edit the content in Athenode instead, and keep your own notes outside the block.
• Empty content: if the setup's AGENTS.md is empty, the block is removed. The file itself is never deleted.
• Broken markers: if the markers are mismatched, duplicated or out of order, the CLI stops with an error and changes nothing. Fix the markers by hand, then run the command again.

What's next

• MCP servers — the tools exported alongside your AGENTS.md
• Agent Setups — create, customise and switch between agent setups
• CLI — the init command and the agent setup commands