#prompt-engineering + #llm/coding

For proprietary agents that don’t want to join in, good old symlinks do the job:

Fix A Broken AGENTS.md With This Prompt

If you're starting to get nervous about the AGENTS.md file in your repo, and you want to refactor it to use progressive disclosure, try copy-pasting this prompt into your coding agent:

I want you to refactor my AGENTS.md file to follow progressive disclosure principles.

Follow these steps:

1. Find contradictions: Identify any instructions that conflict with each other. For each contradiction, ask me which version I want to keep.

2. Identify the essentials: Extract only what belongs in the root AGENTS.md:

   • One-sentence project description
   • Package manager (if not npm)
   • Non-standard build/typecheck commands
   • Anything truly relevant to every single task

3. Group the rest: Organize remaining instructions into logical categories (e.g., TypeScript conventions, testing patterns, API design, Git workflow). For each group, create a separate markdown file.

4. Create the file structure: Output:

   • A minimal root AGENTS.md with markdown links to the separate files
   • Each separate file with its relevant instructions
   • A suggested docs/ folder structure

5. Flag for deletion: Identify any instructions that are:

   • Redundant (the agent already knows this)
   • Too vague to be actionable
   • Overly obvious (like "write clean code")

For every complex task, create THREE files:

task_plan.md → Track phases and progress notes.md → Store research and findings [deliverable].md → Final output

The Loop

1. Create task_plan.md with goal and phases
2. Research → save to notes.md → update task_plan.md
3. Read notes.md → create deliverable → update task_plan.md
4. Deliver final output

Key insight: By reading task_plan.md before each decision, goals stay in the attention window. This is how Manus handles ~50 tool calls without losing track.