August 10, 2026
Estimated reading time: 18 minutes
Key takeaways:
- The SDLC is an agent’s real context, not just AGENTS.md files.
- Separate builder and reviewer at task level, not just PR level, or agents rationalize their own failures.
- Most critical issues trace back to planning, not code.
File-level context engineering has won. Open any modern repository that adopted AI tooling, and you will find an AGENTS.md file steering the tools: Cursor, Claude Code, CodeRabbit all read it. I have spent the last year perfecting these file-level instructions, and by any reasonable measure the approach worked.
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August 10, 2026
