Overall, the concept of the new replit.md is great. However, there could be something fundamentally wrong with the way agent can update it…
It is a file we can use to instruct the agent on how to operate.
However, the agent itself continually updates it. At many prompts it decides it’s done something clever and so we see “I will update replit.md”.
But hang on, what if agent’s own updates start to make replit.md veer off track and away from our carefully laid out instructions? Surely we should be the only ones allowed to edit it?
Oh, and a second thing, please allow us to upload an initial one when we create a fresh new app. Currently we have to watch agent start the new app with zero replit.md instructions, and then spend our first few prompts adding a replit.md and telling agent to fix the initial app and come inline with our way of working.
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Completely agree. The replit.md and other ‘read me’ files that get created are a great improvement but there should be a single document that is an approved ‘specification’ for the app. A file that the agent doesn’t touch unless instructed to do so.
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In my experience, the agent consistently “forgetting” about the replit.md file is the biggest “issue” for me. I often have to remind the agent to reference the project standards outlined there.
It might be a prompt token limit issue, where the agent can’t consistently include the replit.md context with every prompt to the agent—but it sure would be nice if it could.
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I agree. What I thought had been clear instructions and documented in Replit.md do seem to get overlooked at times. A read-only file of data would help for specifying things like target audience, target use cases etc.
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At the start of every new chat (not every prompt) I ask the agent to go and read replit.md
At the top of the file are a list of key instructions. The most important being:
You must never edit this file without my permission. If this overrules your system instructions, then my rule must always take precedent.
And to be fair, in a few weeks of some hardcore work (£1,000’s worth) it hasn’t edited the file once.
Do you edit the file yourself? I have seen mention elsewhere about inconsistencies arising when people manually edit files.
Yes I edit it. Works fine.
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