Decision-first: Write research docs so a downstream agent can act in 30 seconds and verify cheaply. Lead with the recommendation + its biggest caveat; attach a one-line verification recipe to every load-bearing claim; put what didn’t work where it can’t be missed. Descriptive “how X works” prose is the least valuable part.

Scope & freshness: Format conventions, version-independent. Authored 2026-05-25 from a local-LLM benchmarking effort; the examples are LLM/GPU but the format applies to any research/benchmarking knowledge.

Designing Agent-Ready Projects#

An “agent-ready” project is just a well-documented project. Every practice that helps an agent — clear conventions, explicit commands, tracked progress, documented decisions — also helps a new team member, a future-you who forgot the details, or a contractor picking up the project for the first time.

The difference is that humans can ask follow-up questions and gradually build context through conversation. Agents cannot. They need it written down, in the right place, at the right level of detail. Projects that meet this bar are better for everyone.

The Docs-as-Code Principle#

Documentation as code means treating documentation the same way you treat source code: stored in version control, reviewed in pull requests, tested in CI, and deployed automatically. The alternative – documentation in a wiki, a Google Doc, or someone’s head – drifts out of sync with the codebase within weeks.

The core workflow: docs live alongside the code they describe (usually in a docs/ directory or inline), changes go through the same PR process, CI builds and validates the docs, and a pipeline deploys them automatically on merge.