Claude Code Silently Blocks AGENTS.md

🔥 What happened Claude Code 2.1.277 claims AGENTS.md support, but a remote feature flag (tengu_agents_md_mod) with fallback false gates the loader. Disable telemetry (DISABLE_TELEMETRY=1 or CLAUDE_CODE_DISABLE_NONESSENTIAL_TRAFFIC=1) and the file never loads — silently, no warning. 💡 Why it matters A local file read now depends on a server round-trip. That hits exactly the privacy-conscious devs and Bedrock/Vertex/gateway teams who disable nonessential traffic by policy. Workaround: a one-line `@AGENTS.md` in CLAUDE.md — the very thing AGENTS.md was supposed to replace. ⚡ Our take A privacy setting must never silently kill unrelated local behavior. Either the fallback is the documented behavior, or ship a visible startup warning. Anything else is vendor lock-in through the back door.