The dependency notes were kept in a section of the AGENTS.md beside
project.cpp, the file a project commits, so a build could change a
tracked file at any time: a dependency editing its AGENTS.consumer.md,
an unpinned one moving on, a flag pulling a dependency in or out, each
showed up in the consumer's diff as a change nobody made. Users
reported it as the feature clobbering their diffs.
A project now commits its instructions as AGENTS.template.md, and a
build and a test run write AGENTS.md from it: a first line saying the
file is generated and where to edit, the template's text as written,
then the notes section, after it or where the template's marker lines
put it. AGENTS.md is build output and goes into .gitignore. It is
created when missing, since a fresh clone has none, and otherwise
written as before: only when its text changes, in place and under a
lock, so links, ownership and a read-only file are respected.
The first line is also how a build tells its own AGENTS.md from one
someone wrote. Beside a template the second is easily there, as a
committed AGENTS.md nobody has removed yet; it is never replaced, and
each build warns until it is deleted. An empty file counts as a
build's, since that is what a write cut short leaves of a new one. An
AGENTS.md linked to the template is refused: writing it would write
the committed file again. A template the notes cannot be placed in
leaves no empty AGENTS.md behind.
The in-place mode is removed rather than kept as the fallback for a
project without a template. It is the default that put generated text
into tracked files unasked, the moment any dependency started shipping
notes. Without a template a build no longer touches AGENTS.md. One
that still holds a section from 3.0.0 would go stale silently, under a
preamble promising that every build rewrites it, so it gets a warning
naming the move instead.
MergeDependencyNotes keeps its rules and now runs on the template. The
test changes in this commit rather than its own, because it pinned the
in-place behaviour this removes: it now covers the generated file's
shape, edits and markers in the template, the ownership check, a CRLF
template, a link to the template and the cases without one.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Jorijn van der Graaf
74e8370b2b