STANDARDS AND CONVENTIONS

LEARNING GOALS A framework gives you code. A standard gives you an agreement. In this chapter, you will learn about the agent instructions file that sits at the root of a code repository, how to write one well, how competing versions of this idea compare, and how wider interoperability standards help tools work together. THE ELECTRICAL PLUG PICTURE Think about traveling to a country with a different kind of wall socket. Your charger works perfectly at home, but it does not fit the socket in the hotel. You need an adapter. Now imagine that every country used the same plug. You could travel anywhere and everything would simply fit. A standard is an agreed way of doing something so that different people and products can work together without custom adapters. A convention is a softer version, which is a habit that a community follows even though no official body enforces it. The agent world is young, so it has both emerging standards and informal conventions, and some of them are still changing.