Agent-ready repository
A codebase set up so a coding agent can find its way, build, test, and contribute without a human guiding every step.
An agent-ready repo gives an agent what good onboarding gives a new engineer. Written rules. One command to build. One command to test. Checks that fail loudly when something is wrong. The common marker is an AGENTS.md file, read by most major coding tools as of 2026. But the file matters less than what it points at.
The deeper trait is determinism. Agents do best where feedback is mechanical. A lint rule beats a style guide paragraph. A failing test beats a review comment. A scripted setup beats a wiki page. Repos that already did this for humans tend to be agent-ready almost by accident.
The reverse holds too. Picture a repo with flaky tests, tribal setup lore, and rules that live in people's heads. It will get bad agent output for the same reason it makes human onboarding slow.