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

422 points · 236 comments

[Full discussion](<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49814947>)

[Read original](<https://blog.szypowi.cz/p/claude-code-reads-agents.md-only-when-telemetry-is-on/>)

Category: [Agents & Coding](<https://hacksnap.live/?category=agents-coding>)

## Skept-o-meter & Hotness

Skept\-o\-meter: Low\. Estimated from 10 comments\.

17 comments for the summary\.

Peak rank: \#1

Time in Top 10: 24\.0 hours

Hacksnap ranks recent stories first, then orders each group by points\. Peak rank uses all retained observations\. Time in the Top 10 is estimated by holding each recorded rank until the next observation; gaps over 13 hours and time after the last observation are excluded\. Movement between observations is unknown\.

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Hotness — latest 168 recorded Hacksnap ranks:

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The incident shows a local\-file feature silently coupled to telemetry\-dependent remote flags; Anthropic's quick acknowledgment and fix help, but the discussion still questions whether such gating and opaque rollout mechanics are appropriate\.

## The brief

The post documents that Claude Code's AGENTS\.md support is gated behind a remote feature flag whose fallback is false, so with telemetry or nonessential traffic disabled the local AGENTS\.md is silently ignored\. The author reproduces this with a canary word, notes there is no warning, and offers a CLAUDE\.md @AGENTS\.md import workaround\. They argue local file reading should not depend on telemetry and request a warning, global AGENTS\.md support, and native \.agents/skills support\.

- Claude Code 2\.1\.277 announced AGENTS\.md support, but the loader is a built\-in plugin called agents\-md with isOnByDefault false and isAvailable querying the remote flag tengu\_agents\_md\_mod with a false fallback\.
- If the flag cannot be fetched, the plugin is unavailable and AGENTS\.md is never read, even though reading a local markdown file needs no network\.
- The author's canary test found that CLAUDE\_CODE\_DISABLE\_NONESSENTIAL\_TRAFFIC=1 and DISABLE\_TELEMETRY=1 both block AGENTS\.md loading; setting either variable to 0 does not help, and a project \.claude/settings\.json env block has no effect\.
- A session\-level \-\-settings override works from the second session onward, and no warning is printed when AGENTS\.md is skipped\.
- Third\-party gateways, Bedrock, and Vertex reportedly have the same problem because the flag cannot resolve to true there\.
- The workaround is a one\-line CLAUDE\.md containing @AGENTS\.md, which loads the file with telemetry off at the cost of an extra file per repo; the author also wants global AGENTS\.md and native \.agents/skills support\.

## Discussion themes

### Anthropic engineer acknowledges rollout artifact and fix

mpoteat says the behavior was a rollout artifact: a remote kill switch was needed, telemetry\-off users do not receive flags, and it was fixed in v2\.1\.281\. They call it a fully human error and link the Mods source\.

Sources: [Comment 49815363](<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49815363>) · [Comment 49815421](<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49815421>)

### Some defend feature flags as standard rollout practice

One commenter argues this is a simple distributed systems problem: separate deployment from triggering via a lightweight switch, and users may find creative ways that reading AGENTS\.md is not benign\. Another says a kill switch is a reasonable safety measure if the change goes wrong\.

Sources: [Comment 49816940](<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49816940>) · [Comment 49816061](<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49816061>)

### Critics call the design indefensible and the silence worse

A commenter says reading a local file should never depend on a remote feature flag, and silently skipping it with no warning is worse\. Another says the confusing part is not being able to tell whether it was intended or a bug\.

Sources: [Comment 49815398](<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49815398>) · [Comment 49815144](<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49815144>)

### Cause debate: AI\-generated patches versus human rollout error

One commenter attributes the issue to piling up AI\-generated patches without caring about the code\. Another corrects that it was intentional human behavior, a temporary rollout setting, not an AI\-patch bug\. A third criticizes the phrase 'rollout artifact' as Claude\-speak\.

Sources: [Comment 49815277](<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49815277>) · [Comment 49815449](<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49815449>) · [Comment 49815956](<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49815956>)

### Plugin\-system debate over a filename difference

One commenter says the only difference between CLAUDE\.md and AGENTS\.md is the filename and a whole plugin system seems unnecessary\. Others counter that AGENTS\.md is a cross\-agent common format, the correct behavior with both files is not obvious, and the plugin system may have been a trial for a broader extensibility effort\.

Sources: [Comment 49815527](<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49815527>) · [Comment 49815683](<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49815683>) · [Comment 49816061](<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49816061>)

### Docs and source\-availability criticism

A commenter criticizes the Mods documentation as AI\-generated 'Claudish' with inconsistent function/module hook terminology\. Separately, one commenter urges people to stop using a closed\-source harness, while another notes the GitHub repo contains scripts, mods, and plugins but not the harness source itself\.

Sources: [Comment 49816799](<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49816799>) · [Comment 49815333](<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49815333>) · [Comment 49815723](<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49815723>)

## Sources & coverage

AI-generated summary · 2026\-09\-23T16:01:18\.511717\+00:00

Based on 17 of 17 usable stored comments, selected by depth and branch activity. This is a sample of the discussion. Article text may also be shortened.

Generated using deepseek\-ai/DeepSeek\-V4\.1\-Flash. Check the linked sources for full context.