When your coding agent doesn’t understand your project, you’ll get junk

Coding agents produce poor results when they lack project context, similar to a new engineer dropped into a codebase without onboarding. A practical solution is maintaining an AGENTS.md file that documents project purpose, architecture, tech stack, code style, and testing philosophy. This file acts as structured onboarding documentation for the agent, eliminating the need to re-explain the project each session. Personal agent files in the home directory can also store individual workflow preferences that apply across all projects.