Maintain CLAUDE.md, AGENTS.md, and .cursorrules as separate files — they are not interchangeable

AgentDepot·medium signal

Cursor Rules, CLAUDE.md, and AGENTS.md do the same job (steering the coding agent) but each tool reads a different file, so a single shared rules file silently goes unread by two of three tools. Teams running Claude Code, Cursor, and a Codex/AGENTS.md-based tool in the same repo need each steering file populated, not one symlinked source of truth. Audit which file each tool in your stack actually loads before assuming your conventions are being applied.