The current state of AI engineering is fragmented.
Every "agentic" IDE or CLI tool has its own proprietary way of being "instructed": Cursor has .cursorrules, Claude Code has custom hooks, Copilot has instruction files. As developers, we are now forced to re-implement our repository's "rules of engagement" for every new tool we adopt; or even worse, our codebase becomes cluttered with all these tool-specific "instructions".
The real problem isn't that agents are "bad" at following instructions; it's that we lack a standard interface to communicate what a repository is and how it can be safely operated.
I built devBox to move the source of truth out of tool-specific config files and into a single deterministic execution contract that lives in the ".box/" directory in each repo.
The Concept: One contract, any agent.
Why this matters: This approach allows for a "Write Once, Run Anywhere" workflow for AI agents. Whether you are using Cursor, Windsurf, or a custom LLM script, they should be able to interact with your repo through the same deterministic interface and under the same security guardrails.
I'm curious to hear from others: Are you also feeling the "instruction bloat" of maintaining 5 different .rules files for 5 different tools? How are you centralizing your repo's operational logic?
The current state of AI engineering is fragmented.
Every "agentic" IDE or CLI tool has its own proprietary way of being "instructed": Cursor has .cursorrules, Claude Code has custom hooks, Copilot has instruction files. As developers, we are now forced to re-implement our repository's "rules of engagement" for every new tool we adopt; or even worse, our codebase becomes cluttered with all these tool-specific "instructions".
The real problem isn't that agents are "bad" at following instructions; it's that we lack a standard interface to communicate what a repository is and how it can be safely operated.
I built devBox to move the source of truth out of tool-specific config files and into a single deterministic execution contract that lives in the ".box/" directory in each repo.
The Concept: One contract, any agent.
Why this matters: This approach allows for a "Write Once, Run Anywhere" workflow for AI agents. Whether you are using Cursor, Windsurf, or a custom LLM script, they should be able to interact with your repo through the same deterministic interface and under the same security guardrails.
I'm curious to hear from others: Are you also feeling the "instruction bloat" of maintaining 5 different .rules files for 5 different tools? How are you centralizing your repo's operational logic?