Developer says Claude Code skips AGENTS.md when telemetry is off
Przemek Szypowicz reports the loader sits behind a remote feature flag that fails closed, and says users get no warning when the file is ignored.
A developer says recent builds of Anthropic's Claude Code quietly stop reading local AGENTS.md files when telemetry is switched off. Przemek Szypowicz, writing on his own blog on Wednesday, says the behaviour appears in version 2.1.277 and later, and that he tested it on 2.1.280.
His method was a canary. Szypowicz says he created an empty directory containing only an AGENTS.md file with the word PERIWINKLE in it, then asked the tool for the canary word with telemetry disabled. He says the file was not read when DISABLE_TELEMETRY=1 or CLAUDE_CODE_DISABLE_NONESSENTIAL_TRAFFIC=1 was set.
The cause, according to the post, is that the agents-md plugin ships with isOnByDefault set to false and checks a remote flag named tengu_agents_md_mod, falling back to unavailable when it cannot reach the service.
Szypowicz says that makes the loader fail closed for anyone who has turned off nonessential traffic, and that users on third-party gateways such as Bedrock and Vertex may be affected. He suggests a one-line CLAUDE.md containing @AGENTS.md as a workaround.
Anthropic has not responded publicly to the post, and the paper has not reproduced the test. Szypowicz presents the findings as his own observations rather than confirmed behaviour. The post reached the Hacker News front page on Wednesday with 178 points and 67 comments.