AI agent instruction files now appear in 59.6% of the most-starred GitHub projects

Published Nov 4, 2026 ・ Source published Oct 22, 2026

A preprint study of 22,854 widely used, active GitHub projects found instruction files for coding agents, AGENTS.md or CLAUDE.md, in 26.3% of them and in 59.6% of the most-starred. Of 341,852 statements analyzed, 74.0% of directives gave no reason, and projects split on whether to disclose AI use.

Photo: Marc Mueller seven11nash / Wikimedia Commons, CC0 (cropped)

Sources

Research arXiv（査読前） (2026-10-22)
What Open-Source Projects Tell Their Coding Agents: A Census of AGENTS.md and CLAUDE.md

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