# AGENTS.md — an MDXLD frontmatter profile

> AGENTS.md is NOT ours. This host publishes a small additive profile of it:
> the same file, plus three lines of frontmatter.

- This profile: https://agents.md.org.ai/
- The standard's own home: https://agents.md/
- The standard's repository: https://github.com/agentsmd/agents.md (MIT)
- Register this belongs to: https://md.org.ai/

## Provenance of the standard itself

AGENTS.md was released by OpenAI in August 2025 and donated to the Agentic AI
Foundation (AAIF), whose formation the Linux Foundation announced on 9 December
2025, alongside the Model Context Protocol and goose. If anything on this host
disagrees with agents.md, agents.md is right.

## What AGENTS.md is

"A simple, open format for guiding coding agents" — "a README for agents: a
dedicated, predictable place to provide the context and instructions to help AI
coding agents work on your project."

- Plain markdown. Its FAQ: "Are there required fields? No. AGENTS.md is just
  standard Markdown. Use any headings you like."
- Placed at the repository root; packages in a monorepo may carry their own.
  Agents read the nearest file in the directory tree, so the closest one takes
  precedence; an explicit chat instruction overrides all of them.
- It is a format / convention. It has NO version number, NO RFC-2119
  conformance language and NO separate specification document. Do not describe
  it as a versioned spec.

## What this profile adds

    ---
    $id: https://agents.md.org.ai/AGENTS.md
    $type: TechArticle
    $context: https://schema.org.ai
    ---

- `$id` — the file's own address.
- `$type` — `TechArticle`, an existing type at
  https://schema.org.ai/TechArticle. It is the NEAREST existing type, not an
  exact one; we preferred saying so to coining a new word.
- `$context` — https://schema.org.ai.

## Conformance

ANY PLAIN AGENTS.md REMAINS VALID. A file with no frontmatter is a correct
AGENTS.md. This profile is additive and optional: frontmatter is inert to a
markdown renderer and no agent needs it to read the instructions underneath.

Nothing here removes a heading, requires a section, changes precedence between
nested files, or asks an agent to behave differently. A tool that implements
AGENTS.md and ignores this profile entirely is fully correct. This host runs no
conformance test and issues no verdicts.

## Status of this profile

New. NO version number, NO 1.0, and no adoption is claimed. Published so it can
be broken.

## Related surfaces

- https://md.org.ai — the register of .md standards.
- https://todo.md.org.ai — the same three keys on TODO.md.
- https://schema.org.ai — the vocabulary `$context` points at.
- https://foundation.org.ai — The Org.AI Foundation.