Claude Code reads AGENTS.md only when telemetry is on
Claude Code 2.1.277 introduced AGENTS.md support, but its loader was initially behind a remote feature flag tied to telemetry/nonessential traffic. With those settings disabled—or on some gateway, Bedrock, and Vertex sessions—the file could be skipped silently, even though it is local project policy. Anthropic says the rollout bug was fixed in 2.1.281.
The practical lesson is broader than this incident: instruction loading needs an observable, testable contract. A canary test or explicit startup log can catch a tool that claims to apply repository policy but does not. Until the fix, a one-line CLAUDE.md containing @AGENTS.md worked around the flag.