Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke is seriously considering banning Claude Code from the company. Not because the tool is bad — but because it insists on using its own CLAUDE.md.
Shopify runs Claude Code, Codex, and several other AI coding agents side by side. The other tools happily share a single AGENTS.md file, but Claude Code only reads CLAUDE.md. In a large codebase, those two files nest recursively through directories. Miss syncing one level, and someone ends up running with the wrong rules. Shopify has already had to build automated checks to catch the drift, and Lütke thinks the whole thing is a self-inflicted headache.
His ask is simple: Claude Code should just read AGENTS.md, and everyone maintains one file.
Thariq, a member of the Claude Code team, responded that they'd make AGENTS.md easier to use. But then came the pivot: an explanation of why Claude needs its own prompts, Skills, and CLAUDE.md. Models are different, the argument goes, and tailored optimization works better. The short-term workaround? Still a CLAUDE.md that references AGENTS.md.
That doesn't actually solve Lütke's problem. You can keep optimizing Claude all you want — but why must a project's shared rules have a separate Claude-only entry point?
Grok, meanwhile, went digging through the previously leaked Claude Code source code and concluded that the CLAUDE.md filename is simply hardcoded in the loading logic. Swap it for AGENTS.md, and the existing recursive discovery, loading, and referencing machinery works fine — no architecture overhaul required.
So Anthropic isn't incapable of unifying the standard. It just doesn't want to make AGENTS.md the default for Claude Code.
The comments largely side with Lütke. DHH says the distinction is completely unnecessary. Jesse Pollak calls it annoying. Chamath Palihapitiya warns that maintaining two systems will inevitably cause a split-brain. Kun Chen argues the correct approach is to read AGENTS.md by default and leave CLAUDE.md as an optional override for genuine Claude-specific tweaks — not the other way around.
It's the Apple-vs-Android dynamic all over again: compatibility isn't impossible — one side just insists on keeping its own thing.
https://twitter.com/tobi/status/2092259436538495186