mjheadd

A new study reveals a troubling pattern in open source projects adopting AI coding tools: a dramatic short-term burst in productivity that fades within months, leaving behind a persistent accumulation of technical debt that slows future development. One way to mitigate this may lie in an idea as familiar as a CONTRIBUTING.md file — but updated for the AI era.

Worth reading alongside recent research on AGENTS.md file effectiveness. The clearest use case for these files isn't describing your codebase, it's overriding default behavior. If your project has specific requirements around tooling (common in government and regulated industries), that's exactly what belongs in the AGENTS.md files.