Will the agent also have to differentiate between iOS and Android? Claude insists on doing his own thing

Perceive Beating AI Newsletter: Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke is currently considering disabling Claude Code within the company. It's not that Claude doesn't work well, but it insists on using its own CLAUDE.md.

Shopify utilizes multiple agents such as Claude Code and Codex. While other tools can share AGENTS.md, Claude Code only reads CLAUDE.md. These two sets of files are further recursively nested in a large code repository. Any missed synchronization at any level results in someone getting the wrong rules. Shopify has already implemented automated checks as a backup, and Tobi believes this is simply creating problems out of thin air.

His request is actually quite simple: Claude Code should also read AGENTS.md, and maintaining a single file should suffice.

Responding to a Claude Code team member Thariq, they mentioned that they would make AGENTS.md more user-friendly. However, the discussion then shifted to explaining why Claude needs its own prompt, skills, and CLAUDE.md: the models differ, and specialized optimization yields better results. As a short-term solution, they still refer to AGENTS.md within CLAUDE.md.

This doesn't address Tobi's concern. While you can continue to provide exclusive optimizations for Claude, why must there be an additional Claude-specific entry point for maintaining project rules?

Grok took a look at the previously leaked Claude Code source code and came to a more straightforward conclusion: the file name CLAUDE.md is hardcoded in the loading logic. Simply changing it to AGENTS.md would allow the existing recursive discovery, loading, and referencing mechanism to function without the need for any major architectural changes.

In simple terms, AGENTS.md is not unusable; Claude Code simply insists on maintaining its own CLAUDE.md.

The comment section overwhelmingly supports Tobi's viewpoint. DHH said this distinction is entirely unnecessary, Jesse Pollak finds it annoying, and Chamath Palihapitiya believes continuing with two separate sets will surely lead to "brain fissures." Kun Chen suggests that the correct approach would be to default to reading AGENTS.md. If genuine Claude-specific optimizations are required, then keeping CLAUDE.md optional should be the way to go, instead of the current setup.