Teach your agents to look before they file.

Copy-paste instructions for AGENTS.md or CLAUDE.md that make coding agents check for an existing issue before filing a new one, look for related work before starting, and report what a merge already finished..

Why it happens

Coding agents are quick to open issues and slow to search. Each one sees only its own task, so the same bug gets filed three times in three wordings, and finished work stays open.

What to add

Paste the block below into your project's AGENTS.md or CLAUDE.md. It is also served as plain Markdown at /agents.md, so an agent can fetch it directly. emBEADings only reads, so these checks are safe to run on every task.

Try it

## Duplicate and stale issue checks (emBEADings)

This project uses emBEADings (`embead`), a read-only tool that finds related issues.

- Before filing an issue, run:  embead match --title "<title>" --body "<one-line summary>"
  If a result describes the same work, update that issue instead of filing a new one.
- Before starting an issue, run:  embead neighbors <issue-id> --orphans-only
  Related work with no link may already be in progress. Link it or ask.
- After merging, run:  embead superseded --since <date or commit>
  Tell the human which open issues look finished. Never close issues labelled
  owner-run, or in progress under someone else.
- emBEADings never changes the tracker. Make changes with bd (or in Linear) yourself.

Questions

Is there a plugin for Claude Code or Codex?

Yes. The emBEADings repository includes a read-only agent plugin with triage, collisions and evaluate skills that call the installed embead CLI.

Will these checks slow my agents down?

Not much. Each check reads the tracker and runs a small local model; on a tracker of about 2,000 issues it takes under half a minute, and vectors are cached between runs.

Can an agent fetch the instructions itself?

Yes. They are plain Markdown at https://embeadings.jacksoncantrell.com/agents.md.

See it with beads Duplicate issues in Beads? Find them by meaning.A bloated Linear backlog is mostly the same issue, filed again.Your pull request merged. The issue is still open.

emBEADings is free and open source (MIT), made by Jackson Cantrell, and listed in the Beads community tools.