Does Claude Code Read AGENTS.md? What the Official Docs Actually Say

Claude Code users are starting to notice a practical problem: many teams keep their shared rules in AGENTS.md, but Anthropic's official documentation describes CLAUDE.md as the persistent instruction file Claude Code reads for project memory.

That does not mean AGENTS.md is useless. It means AGENTS.md is not the documented default entry point for Claude Code. The safer setup is to keep shared rules in AGENTS.md, add a CLAUDE.md, and import the shared file from there with @AGENTS.md.

In practice, the recommendation is straightforward:

# CLAUDE.md

@AGENTS.md

## Claude-specific notes

- Keep this file short
- Put shared project rules in AGENTS.md

This avoids duplicate rule maintenance and makes it clear which file Claude Code is expected to load first. If you only use Claude Code, you may choose to keep everything in CLAUDE.md. If you work across multiple agent tools, keeping AGENTS.md as the shared source of truth and using CLAUDE.md as the bridge is usually the cleaner option.

References:

• Oikon on X
• Set up Claude Code | Anthropic Docs
• Claude Code memory | Anthropic Docs

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