Group of 7 Use it now
Instruction-file loading was renamed to instructionFiles, gained new modes with AGENTS.md fallback as default, and now reports plugin instruction stats
What
- The setting is renamed from
projectInstructionstoinstructionFiles; the old name still works as a deprecated alias but logs a one-time warning telling you to migrate. - The recognized modes changed from
claude,agents-fallback,both,nonetoclaude-md,claude-md-or-agents-md,claude-md-and-agents-md,managed-only. - The default mode is now
claude-md-or-agents-md, so a project with no CLAUDE.md of its own now automatically gets its AGENTS.md files loaded instead, without needing to turn anything on. - New telemetry events (
agents_md_load,agents_md_nested) record file count, import count, total content length, and whether the file walk succeeded or failed, tagged by the resolved mode. - Project context-loading results now always include a
pluginInstructionFilesfield (withfileCountandtotalContentLength) alongside the existingclaudeMd,instructionFiles, andmemoryFilesfields.
Why
This clarifies and simplifies how Claude Code decides which project instruction files (CLAUDE.md, AGENTS.md) to load, makes AGENTS.md usable out of the box for projects that don't have their own CLAUDE.md, and gives better visibility into which instruction files, including ones contributed by plugins, actually got loaded.
Names in the bundleAGENTS.mdCLAUDE.md
The entry above is what we published on the day. These lines were added later, as Anthropic's own pages caught up, and they sit beside the original rather than replacing it.
Added since
A small documentation edit on How Claude remembers your project touched a line naming CLAUDE.md after this was published.
For an interactive multi-phase flow instead, set the `CLAUDE_CODE_NEW_INIT` environment variable to `1` before you run `/init`. Set it in your shell or in the `env` block of a settings file, as shown in [Set environment variables](/docs/en…memory see the edit
Confirmed since
Anthropic's documentation has since written up AGENTS.md, on Explore the .claude directory.
| `AGENTS.md` | Project root, `.claude/`, or any directory | Project instructions you write for AI coding agents. Claude Code can [load it](/docs/en/memory#agents-md) on its own or alongside `CLAUDE.md`. |claude-directory see the edit
Confirmed since
Anthropic's documentation has since written up CLAUDE.md, on Explore the .claude directory.
| `CLAUDE.local.md` | Project root | Your private preferences for this project, loaded alongside CLAUDE.md. Create it manually and add it to `.gitignore`. |claude-directory see the edit
One source agreesOne thing we can check says the same as this entry.
Anthropic's documentation agrees
Anthropic's documentation has since written up CLAUDE.md, on Explore the .claude directory.