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. Where the gate is 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.…