Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke said he is considering banning Claude Code at the company. The issue, he said, is not that Claude performs poorly. It is that Claude Code insists on its own CLAUDE.md file instead of reading the same AGENTS.md file used by other agents.
Shopify uses multiple agents at the same time, including Claude Code and Codex. According to Lütke, other tools can share AGENTS.md, while Claude Code reads only CLAUDE.md. In large code repositories, both files can be loaded recursively through multiple layers. Miss one sync at any level, and someone ends up working from the wrong rules.
Shopify has already written automated checks to catch that problem. Lütke said the extra work is needless. His request is straightforward: Claude Code should read AGENTS.md too, so teams only have to maintain one shared file.
Claude Code team member Thariq responded that the team will make AGENTS.md easier to use. He then argued that Claude still needs its own prompts, Skills, and CLAUDE.md because models differ and targeted optimization works better. For now, the workaround remains the same: reference AGENTS.md from inside CLAUDE.md.
That does not solve the problem Lütke raised. The point in dispute is not whether Claude can have custom optimizations. It is whether project rules need a second, Claude-only entry point in the first place.
Grok, after reviewing previously leaked Claude Code source code, gave a more direct take. It said the filename CLAUDE.md is hardcoded into the loading logic, and that replacing it with AGENTS.md would still preserve the existing recursive discovery, loading, and reference mechanism without requiring a major architectural change.
In other words, the argument is not that AGENTS.md cannot work. It is that Claude Code still insists on keeping a separate CLAUDE.md path.
Commenters largely sided with Lütke. DHH said the distinction is completely unnecessary. Jesse Pollak called it annoying. Chamath Palihapitiya said keeping two parallel systems would lead to 「split brain」, while Kun Chen said the better design would be to read AGENTS.md by default and keep CLAUDE.md only as an optional layer for Claude-specific tuning when needed.