Agents Template: A Standardized Behavioral Guide Framework for AI Programming Assistants

The wcgomes/agents project provides a minimalist, environment-agnostic AGENTS.md template that defines core behavioral guidelines, Wiki memory system, workflow norms, expert agent delegation, and context management strategies for AI programming assistants. It addresses the issue of inconsistent behavior of AI assistants across different projects/teams, ensures predictability through mandatory norms, and helps AI follow rules, accumulate knowledge, and guarantee quality like human team members.

With the popularization of AI programming assistants in software development, ensuring their consistent and predictable performance across different projects and teams has become a key issue. The wcgomes/agents project emerged to address this pain point by providing a binding behavioral规范 template that explicitly requires adherence 'in every task and session'.

Core Behavioral Guidelines

1. Explicit Assumptions and Proactive Communication: State assumptions before implementation, ask questions when in doubt, present all possibilities, and proactively propose better solutions.
2. Information Density Principle: Output should be minimalist (remove articles, filler words, polite phrases, etc.), recommend the sentence structure [Thing] [Action] [Reason] [Next Step], with exceptions (code blocks, safety warnings, etc.) requiring complete writing.

Goal-Oriented and Code Quality

• Tasks need clear verifiable goals; for multi-step tasks, share the plan first for confirmation; after execution, test and check norms, show diffs for approval before application; stop and seek help if no progress for two consecutive cycles.
• Code follows minimalism: write the least code, do not add speculative features, follow existing styles, delete unused code (do not touch pre-existing dead code).

Wiki Memory System

• Structure Norms: The wiki/ directory is the only persistent memory, containing index.md (must be updated), architecture.md, etc. New pages must be linked from index.md.
• Operation Process: Ingestion (proactively update wiki at the end of tasks), query (read wiki/index.md first), organization (fix conflicting/isolated pages).

Expert Agent Delegation

• Default Delegation Principle: Check available agents first; if there is a relevant expert, delegate (even if you can do it yourself); if not, handle directly.
• Delegation Strategy: Assign corresponding experts for single domains; form a team to coordinate for multi-domain tasks; for multi-stage tasks, submit results to an expert coordinator for review.

Context Management

• Load only wiki pages relevant to the current task; check the wiki before searching source code; release irrelevant context after completing steps to ensure efficiency.

Rule and Rationale Comparison Table

Rule	Rationale
Search for existing feature extensions before creating files	Prevent spread and duplication
Create new files only when extension is impossible and explain the reason	Force reuse analysis
Do not use mock data in production code (except for testing)	Data integrity
Fix root causes instead of symptoms	Code quality
Annotate referenced code with file:line	Traceability

The agents template represents a mature AI programming collaboration model, making AI behavior predictable, reviewable, and maintainable through explicit constraints. Its value to teams includes:

1. Consistency: Consistent behavior across different sessions, reducing the hassle of 'every time it's different';
2. Traceability: Wiki memory accumulates project knowledge that doesn't get lost when sessions end;
3. Quality Assurance: Strict code principles and testing requirements that meet engineering standards;
4. Efficiency Improvement: Minimalist communication and goal orientation reduce unnecessary back-and-forth. Its core philosophy: AI programming assistants should follow norms, accumulate knowledge, and take responsibility for output quality like human team members.