agent-context-system

# Agent Context System

## The Problem

Agents start from zero every session. You spend an hour getting your coding agent up to speed on a project, close the session, and start from zero the next day. The agent forgot everything. Every session is a cold start.

This isn't a limitation of the model. It's a context delivery problem. The agents have the capacity to remember — they just don't have the right inputs at the right time in the right format.

## The Solution

Two markdown files. One committed, one gitignored. The agent reads both at the start of every session and updates the local one at the end.

- **`AGENTS.md`** — Your project's source of truth. Committed and shared. Always in the agent's prompt. Under 120 lines. Contains compressed project knowledge: patterns, boundaries, gotchas, commands, architecture.

- **`.agents.local.md`** — Your personal scratchpad. Gitignored. Grows over time as the agent logs what it learns each session. Session notes, dead ends, preferences, patterns that haven't been promoted yet.

That's it. No plugins, no infrastructure, no background processes. The convention lives inside the files themselves, and the agent follows it.

## How It Works

### 1. Setup

Run the init script. It creates `.agents.local.md` from a template, ensures it's gitignored, and wires up your agent tool's config (CLAUDE.md symlink for Claude Code, .cursorrules for Cursor, .windsurfrules for Windsurf, copilot-instructions.md for Copilot).

```bash
# If you cloned the template repo:
./scripts/init-agent-context.sh

# If you installed as a skill (npx skills add):
bash .agents/skills/agent-context-system/scripts/init-agent-context.sh
```

Then edit `AGENTS.md` with your project specifics: name, stack, commands, actual patterns and gotchas from your codebase. This is the highest-leverage edit you'll make.

### 2. During Sessions

The agent reads both files at session start. `AGENTS.md` gives it compressed project knowledge. `.agents.local.md` gives it accumulate...

# Agent Context System

Coding agents are good at using context. They are terrible at keeping it consistent.

Tools like GitHub Copilot Memory are doing great work on the individual side. Copilot remembers your preferences, your patterns, your stack. That's a real step forward for developer experience.

But there's a layer that built-in memory doesn't cover: shared, reviewable, version-controlled project context. The stuff that lives in your repo and works across every agent your team uses. Teams still hit the same walls:

- The "rules of the repo" live in chat threads and tribal knowledge
- A new agent or subagent starts without the constraints that matter
- The agent learns something once, then you can't review it like code
- Context drifts because nobody promotes stable decisions into a shared source of truth

This project is a small, boring fix. It doesn't replace built-in memory. It complements it. Built-in memory handles what the tool learns about *you*. This handles what every agent needs to know about *your project*. It makes that context explicit, reviewable, and portable.

## What this is

Two markdown files. One committed, one gitignored. The agent reads both at the start of every session and updates the local one at the end.

- `AGENTS.md` is your project's source of truth. Committed and shared. Always in the agent's prompt.
- `.agents.local.md` is your personal scratchpad. Gitignored. It grows over time as the agent logs what it learns each session.

That's it. No plugins, no infrastructure, no background processes. The convention lives inside the files themselves, and the agent follows it.

```
your-repo/
├── AGENTS.md                    # Committed. Always loaded. Under 120 lines.
├── .agents.local.md             # Gitignored. Personal scratchpad.
├── agent-context                # CLI: init, validate, promote commands.
├── agent_docs/                  # Deeper docs. Read only when needed.
│   ├── conventions.md
│   ├── architecture.md
│   └── gotchas...