The referenced paper says No.

The paper actually says: "We find that all context files consistently increase the number of steps required to complete tasks. LLM-generated context files have a marginal negative effect on task success rates, while developer-written ones provide a marginal performance gain."

"Overall, our results suggest that context files have only marginal effect on agent behavior, and are likely only desirable when manually written."

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verminator468 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I say Nes.

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Drakim 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You are absolutely right, thank you for pushing back. Upon further examination, I've confirmed that the referenced paper says no.

	▲	sam_lowry_ an hour ago \| parent [-]
		On a second thought... The result is counter-intuitive, because writing AGENTS.md (and reading if it's generated) contributes to the context in the human. So yes, AGENTS.md probably help more than the paper says, but not the way we initially frame it. Dunno if there's a way to test that AGENTS.md help the human more than the machine.