AGENTS.md · GoAGENTS.md and CLAUDE.md examples for Go
Of 104 actively developed open-source products built with Go, 60 (58%) keep instruction files for coding agents: AGENTS.md in 50, CLAUDE.md in 31. The typical file is 991 words, and most cover pointers to other docs (78%) and commands to build, run and test (65%).
Real files to read
From the best-known open-source Go products whose file is a real one (not a pointer to another), 200 to 4,000 words, covering at least three of the usual topics, written mainly in Go. Each opens on GitHub.
| Project | File | Stars | Words | Covers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| infiniflow/ragflow | AGENTS.md | 92,016 | 2,138 | CommandsTestingDoc pointersStructure |
| kubernetes/kops | AGENTS.md | 16,685 | 683 | CommandsTestingDoc pointersStructureCode styleGit |
| Untrivial-ai/agent-orchestrator | AGENTS.md | 13,085 | 1,890 | CommandsTestingDoc pointersStructureCode styleGit |
| kenn-io/agentsview | AGENTS.md | 6,093 | 1,220 | Doc pointersCode styleGit |
| kagent-dev/kagent | AGENTS.md | 3,990 | 1,298 | CommandsTestingDoc pointersStructure |
| nextlevelbuilder/goclaw | AGENTS.md | 3,646 | 3,111 | CommandsTestingDoc pointersStructureCode style |
| storj/storj | CLAUDE.md | 3,282 | 1,375 | CommandsTestingDoc pointersStructureCode style |
| perses/perses | AGENTS.md | 2,481 | 581 | CommandsTestingDoc pointersStructure |
| kubeflow/trainer | AGENTS.md | 2,242 | 1,631 | CommandsTestingDoc pointersCode styleGit |
| authorizerdev/authorizer | AGENTS.md | 2,111 | 2,658 | CommandsTestingDoc pointersStructureCode style |
| ZeroDeng01/sublinkPro | AGENTS.md | 1,682 | 2,867 | CommandsTestingDoc pointersCode styleGit |
| c9s/bbgo | CLAUDE.md | 1,673 | 872 | CommandsTestingDoc pointersStructureCode style |
What Go projects put in them
Share of the 54 files that cover each topic, against all 641 files we read.
How they talk to the agent: 78% say “never” or “do not” somewhere (all files: 80%), 26% shout a rule in capitals like IMPORTANT or MUST (24%), and 17% tell it to ask before some changes (20%).
The tools they name
Package managersgo (16 files), pnpm (10 files), npm (9 files)
Tests and lintersVitest (8), Playwright (6), pytest (5), ESLint (4), Prettier (4), Jest (2)
Named more than in files generallyPostgreSQL (13), Kubernetes (6)
Questions
What should an AGENTS.md for a Go project include?
In 54 files from open-source Go products: pointers to other docs (78%), commands to build, run and test (65%), testing (61%), git, commits and pull requests (44%), code style (43%), project structure (37%). The package manager they name most is go (16 files).
AGENTS.md or CLAUDE.md?
Among these Go products, 50 keep an AGENTS.md and 31 a CLAUDE.md. Across every product we checked, 320 keep both, and in 170 of those the CLAUDE.md only points to the AGENTS.md (a symlink or a line like @AGENTS.md), so there's one file to maintain. Codex, Cursor, Copilot and others read AGENTS.md; Claude Code reads CLAUDE.md.
How long is a typical Go AGENTS.md?
The median is 991 words in these 54 files; across all 641 files we read, half are between 425 and 1,665 words.
How this is counted: the GitHub repos of open-source products built with Go, pushed to in the 180 days before 2026-10-12. We read each repo's AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md and other agent files; what's published here is counts and links, not their text. All files, by the numbers.