Writing For Agents

Reference for writing any document an agent consumes — a skill, an AGENTS.md, a doc reached by a pointer. The packaging differs; the writing does not: the same levers make each one predictable — the agent taking the same process every run, not producing the same output.

Context pointers

A context pointer is a reference held in the agent's context that names some out-of-context material and encodes the condition for reaching it. A skill's description is one; a line in AGENTS.md naming a doc is the same object. The pointer's wording, not its target, decides when the agent reaches the material — and how reliably. A must-have target behind a weakly worded pointer is a variance bug: sharpen the wording first, and inline the material only if sharpening fails.

A pointer does two jobs — state what the material is, and list the branches that should trigger reaching it (a branch is a distinct case the document handles, so different runs take different paths through it). Every word of an always-loaded pointer costs on every turn, so it earns even harder pruning than the body:

• Front-load the leading word — the pointer is where it does its triggering work.
• One trigger per branch. Synonyms that rename a single branch are one branch written twice; collapse them and keep only genuinely distinct branches.
• Cut identity the body already carries.
• Name the work, not an incident. A trigger fires on what the agent is about to do ("OpenCode SDK calls", "bootstrap"); a fixed bug's symptom fires only when that bug is back. A rule learned from an incident lives in its canonical skill's body, with a one-line pointer in the skills loaded while that kind of code is written.

The two loads

Every document and pointer you add spends one of two budgets:

• Context load — the cost of always-loaded material on the agent's window: an AGENTS.md line, a skill description, anything sitting in context every turn, spending tokens and attention whether or not it fires.
• Cognitive load — the cost on the human: which documents exist and when to reach for each. The human is the index. Not a cost to minimise — it is the price of human agency; spend it where human judgement matters, remove it where it does not.

Material reached only through a pointer escapes context load at the price of the pointer's own line; material with no pointer at all rides entirely on cognitive load.

Information hierarchy

A document is built from two content types — steps (the ordered actions the agent performs) and reference (definitions, rules, facts consulted on demand) — that mix freely: all steps (a recipe), all reference (a review's rules, this skill), or both. The core decision is where each piece sits on the information hierarchy, a ladder ranked by how immediately the agent needs the material:

1. In-file step — the primary tier: what the agent does, in order.
2. In-file reference — consulted on demand. Often a legitimately flat peer-set (every rule of a review on one rung) — a fine arrangement, not a smell.
3. Disclosed reference — pushed out into a separate file, reached by a context pointer, loaded only when the pointer fires. Spans a sibling file in the same folder through fully external reference that lives anywhere and any document can point at.

Push too little down and the top bloats; push too much and you hide material the agent actually needs. That tension is the whole decision.

Progressive disclosure is the move down the ladder — out of the main file and behind a pointer — so the top stays legible. Not primarily a token optimisation: it is how the hierarchy is protected. Branching is the cleanest disclosure test: inline what every branch needs, and push behind a pointer what only some branches reach. When a document has steps, in-file reference that should be disclosed buries them and turns attending to them into a coin-flip — a variance lever, not just a legibility one.

Co-location is the within-file companion: where the ladder decides how far down a piece sits, co-location decides what sits beside it once there. Keep a concept's definition, rules, and caveats under one heading rather than scattered, so reading one part brings its neighbours with it. The test: the document should read like documentation written for the agent — grouped material reads that way; scattered material does not. (Distinct from duplication: that repeats one meaning in two places; scattering fragments one meaning across many.)

Sprawl is the failure mode here: a document simply too long, even when every line is live and unique. Attention thins across the excess, and every extra line is one more to keep relevant. The cure is the ladder: disclose reference behind pointers, and split by branch or sequence so each path carries only what it needs.

Steps and completion criteria

Every step ends on a completion criterion — the condition that tells the agent the work is done. Two properties make it a lever:

• Clarity — can the agent tell done from not-done? A vague bound ("understanding reached") invites premature completion: ending the step before it is genuinely done, attention slipping to being done. The visible steps still ahead — the post-completion steps — supply the pull; the criterion's clarity is the resistance. Defend in order: sharpen the bound first (local and cheap); only if it is irreducibly fuzzy and you observe the rush, hide the later steps by splitting the sequence — and hiding only works across a real context boundary (a hand-off or a subagent dispatch; an inline call leaves the later steps in context and clears nothing).
• Demand — how much it requires. "Every modified model accounted for" forces thorough work where "produce a change list" does not. Demand drives legwork — the digging the agent does within the work, latent in the wording rather than written as its own step — and it is not step-bound: "every rule applied" binds a body of flat reference just as "every step done" binds a sequence, which is how an all-reference document still carries an exhaustiveness bar.

The strongest criteria are both checkable and exhaustive.

When to split

Splitting one document into two spends one of the two loads, so split only when the cut earns it:

• By sequence — split a run of steps where the post-completion steps tempt the agent to rush the one in front of it. Keeping them out of view drives more legwork on the current task. Beware the reverse: merging sequences exposes each step's later steps to what follows, inviting premature completion.