Claude Code skips AGENTS.md when telemetry is off
If you turn off telemetry, Claude Code 2.1.280 silently ignores your AGENTS.md, even though reading the file needs no network. The author of a write-up found why in the bundle. The agents-md plugin checks a remote flag, tengu_agents_md_mod, and treats it as false when it can’t fetch it.
Setting either DISABLE_TELEMETRY=1 or CLAUDE_CODE_DISABLE_NONESSENTIAL_TRAFFIC=1 blocks the file. Setting them to 0 doesn’t help, and a project-level settings override does nothing either. Issue #95690 says Bedrock, Vertex and third-party gateways have the same problem.
You get no warning, and the session just runs without your instructions. The workaround is a one-line CLAUDE.md containing @AGENTS.md, since those imports don’t depend on the flag. So the file meant to replace CLAUDE.md now needs a CLAUDE.md.
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