5 AGENTS.md Patterns That 10x Your AI Coding Workflow (With Templates)

If you're using AI coding tools without an AGENTS.md file, you're leaving 80% of their capability on the table. AGENTS.md is rapidly becoming the standard way to give AI coding agents persistent project context. Claude Code reads it automatically. Cursor respects it. Copilot and Codex are adopting similar patterns. Here are 5 patterns I've tested across real projects that dramatically improve AI output quality. Pattern 1: The Context Pyramid Problem: AI generates code that doesn't match your stack, conventions, or architecture. # AGENTS.md ## Architecture - Monorepo: apps/ (Next.js 15) + packages/ (shared libs) - Database: PostgreSQL 16 + Drizzle ORM (NOT Prisma) - Auth: Better-Auth v2 (NOT NextAuth) - Styling: Tailwind CSS v4 + shadcn/ui ## Conventions - File naming: kebab-case (user-profile.tsx, NOT UserProfile.tsx) - Exports: named only (NO default exports) - Error handling: Result<T, E> pattern (NO try/catch in business logic) - Tests: Vitest + Testing Library (NO Jest) ## Do