Przemyslaw Szypowicz · 2026-09-23 · notable
Claude Code's AGENTS.md support needed telemetry on — a fix is coming
Przemyslaw Szypowicz found that Claude Code 2.1.277+ silently skips AGENTS.md when telemetry is off, because a remote feature flag gates it. An Anthropic engineer called it a rollout mistake and said v2.1.281 fixes it.
A local file that Claude Code promised to read was hidden behind a server-side switch that privacy settings turned off.
What is it?
Claude Code 2.1.277 added AGENTS.md support: with no CLAUDE.md in a project, it should read AGENTS.md instead. Przemyslaw Szypowicz showed that with DISABLE_TELEMETRY=1 or CLAUDE_CODE_DISABLE_NONESSENTIAL_TRAFFIC=1 set, the file is never loaded, and nothing warns the user.
How does it work?
The loader checks a remote Statsig flag, tengu_agents_md_mod, before it runs. Turning off telemetry also stops the flag from being fetched, so the check fails quietly. Szypowicz proved it with a test folder holding only an AGENTS.md with a canary word, and the fix until an update is a one-line CLAUDE.md containing @AGENTS.md.
Why does it matter?
The users most likely to disable telemetry, and teams on Bedrock or Vertex gateways, were the ones silently losing their project instructions. On the Hacker News thread (365+ points), Anthropic's mpoteat said the flag was a remote kill-switch for the launch, called it 'a fully human error', and said the fix ships in v2.1.281.
Who is it for?
Claude Code users with telemetry disabled
Try it
echo '@AGENTS.md' > CLAUDE.md