AGENTS.md

Project rules are Markdown files that Grok loads into context for every session in a directory tree. Put coding conventions, build and test commands, and architecture notes in an AGENTS.md at your repo root, and Grok follows them without being told each session.

Grok loads rules in this order, with deeper files taking precedence on conflicts:

1. Global rules in ~/.grok/
2. Every directory from the repo root down to the working directory (or only the working directory outside a git repo)

Within each directory, Grok reads any of AGENTS.md, Agents.md, AGENT.md, CLAUDE.md, Claude.md, and CLAUDE.local.md, plus every *.md file in a .grok/rules/ directory (.claude/rules/ and .cursor/rules/ are read for compatibility). Files ignored by .gitignore are skipped, which keeps personal overrides like CLAUDE.local.md out of shared context.

A nested AGENTS.md scopes to its subtree, so a monorepo can carry different conventions per package:

my-monorepo/
  AGENTS.md                # repo-wide rules
  packages/
    frontend/AGENTS.md     # "Use React. Prefer CSS modules."
    backend/AGENTS.md      # "Use Express. Follow REST conventions."

Files are loaded in full, with no size cap; short, specific instructions are followed more reliably than long ones.

To add rules for a single run without editing files, pass --rules (Grok appends the text to the system prompt), or --system-prompt-override to replace the system prompt entirely:

grok --rules "Always use TypeScript. Prefer functional components."

grok inspect

This lists each rules file Grok found, with its path and approximate token count.