[mikodin]

I am super curious how much in your opinion the extra prompting is useful?

>often harnesses also mention in their system prompt locations of markdown files that the model can consult if the model thinks they might help >that hint alone as part of the system prompt can be strong enough to make the model read in more tokens than would have been necessary

I purposefully do this as I imagine it is useful. In my project I am seeing solid adherence to norms and a deep capacity to iterate on completed features. Essentially for each feature I have the model make a {featureName}.AGENTS.md at the root folder of the feature, where it maintains what is going on.

I am moving between Claude Code and Codex atm, but I began this pattern when pi + kimi 2.6 was my main driver.

[tosh]

I do think prompting and reference files (e.g. for architecture, tech stack, …) can be extremely helpful. I also do this in my projects (challenge is keeping drift of these documents at bay).

What I wanted to emphasize is that whatever is in the context (whether system prompt or user message does 'steer' the model in a strong way, so everything in the context affects overall performance in a way. Even if it is 'just' net neutral it takes space up in the context window.

The context window is very very precious, everything that goes into it should help (not just hopefully help).

The challenge is coming up with good stuff to put into that context. A good agents.md file will be better context than whatever the popular harnesses have in their system prompt.

Also good to keep in mind that newer models are very good and more agentic than older models so they are better at exploring their environment based on the tasks you give them.

[cyanydeez]

I tailored an opencode agent with terse, minimum instruction, going as far as using ascii symbols and definitions.

Works fine. My conclusion is treat it like a starting point and not a holy bible of everything the model needs to know.

I pair this with making sure task files are commented with headers like build scripts so context+instruction is consistent.

The happy path then is the LLM pulling in context where it needs it.