Claude Code 2.1.277 now reads AGENTS.md automatically when a project folder lacks CLAUDE.md, adding support for alternative project instructions.

The update introduces a conditional fallback for project instructions. Beginning with Claude Code version 2.1.277, Claude automatically looks for and reads AGENTS.md when the project folder does not contain CLAUDE.md. The supplied report does not describe this as replacing CLAUDE.md or merging both files when both exist.

The report links the change to a longstanding feature request. The corresponding GitHub issue had been open since August 2025 and accumulated more than 5,200 positive reactions and 300 comments. It was described as the repository’s highest-voted feature request, with four times the votes of the second-ranked request.

The announcement was attributed to Claude Code engineer Thariq. According to the Telegram message, citing Xinzhiyuan (新智元), his X post exceeded one million views within an hour. Because the supplied dataset contains neither that X post’s URL nor the GitHub issue URL, the attribution below is to the available Telegram report.