A new ETH Zurich study challenges the common practice of using `AGENTS.md` files with AI coding agents. LLM-generated context files decrease performance (3% lower success rate, +20% steps/costs).Human-written files offer small gains (4% success rate) but also increase costs. Researchers recommend omitting context files unless manually written with non-inferable details (tooling, build commands).They tested this using a new dataset, AGENTbench, with four agents.
