Comment by lelandbatey
1 hour ago
Your solution "appears" to solve the problem, but without any information about how exactly that solution works, it's just magic an vibes.
Does the harness parse the contents of CLAUDE.md, see the @AGENTS.md and then inject the contents of AGENTS.md into that file with a note saying "hey Claude-the-llm, here's the contents of AGENTS.md per an @reference"? Does the harness parse and inject but WITHOUT any ceremony telling claude-the-llm that what it's looking at is from another file? Or does the harness do nothing and Claude-the-llm is merely trained to see @references and treat those as "I should go read that file"? Which is it? If it's #1 and #3, then on long contexts/after compaction, then the LLM is still pretty likely to lose the fact that it read that file and re-read it again. If it's #2, the LLM could have the same problem as with the symlinks.
How does it work? The Anropic docs certainly don't say. So what's the best choice? I guess it's magic. For folks like me who care though, I guess there's always Pi or Opencode (or even, writing your own harness [which is shockingly easy if you want it reliable without all the fanciest features]).
why over complicate it? the answer is obviously yes? it sees it and reads the file? might it sometimes not? yeah, just like every other thing you write in agents.md or the prompt. if you want to write a more verbose statement telling it to read the other file do so. or if you really want to make damn sure it read what you wrote, then symlink it, because it does in fact read the thing twice.