Agent Smith

What is Agent Smith?

Agent Smith is a CLI tool that auto-generates an AGENTS.md file from your codebase. AGENTS.md is an open standard for giving AI coding assistants context about a project, adopted by 60,000+ projects and supported by tools like Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Claude Code, VS Code, and Gemini CLI. It's for developers who want a comprehensive, automatically maintained context file that AI tools read without any configuration.

How to use Agent Smith?

Run directly with npx @jpoindexter/agent-smith in your project directory or install globally with npm install -g @jpoindexter/agent-smith. Use agentsmith (default), or specify a directory with agentsmith ./my-project. Additional flags include --dry-run (preview without writing), --output <file> (custom output), --force (overwrite existing), and output mode flags: --compact, --compress, --minimal, --xml, and a file tree visualization.

Key features of Agent Smith

• Scans codebase for components, hooks, API routes, and more
• Detects frameworks like Next.js, shadcn/ui, and Prisma
• Generates AGENTS.md with approximately 11K tokens by default
• Multiple output modes: compact, compress, minimal, XML
• Integrates automatically with AI coding tools (no config needed)
• Supports dry-run preview and custom output file location

Use cases of Agent Smith

• Quickly generate AGENTS.md for a new or existing project
• Refresh AGENTS.md when code structure changes significantly
• Create a minimal-context version for faster AI responses
• Preview the generated file before writing it (dry run)
• Generate an XML-format context file compatible with Repomix

FAQ from Agent Smith

What does Agent Smith generate?

It generates an AGENTS.md file—an open standard context file that AI coding tools automatically discover and read.

How does Agent Smith integrate with AI tools?

AI tools such as Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Claude Code, and VS Code automatically discover and read AGENTS.md files with no configuration needed.

Can I customize the output?

Yes. You can specify a custom output file (--output), choose a compact, compress, or minimal mode, output in XML format, or include a file tree. Use --dry-run to preview.

Do I need to install anything to run Agent Smith?

No. You can run it directly with npx @jpoindexter/agent-smith. Optionally, you can install it globally with npm install -g @jpoindexter/agent-smith.

What kinds of code structures does Agent Smith detect?

It detects components, component variants, color tokens, custom hooks, API routes, environment variables, the framework (e.g., Next.js App Router), design system patterns, code patterns, test coverage, barrel exports, hub files (most imported), Props types, and Prisma schema models.