A concrete baseline for configuring a coding agent in 2026

A 40-engineer survey writeup lands on a default config worth copying: custom style instructions, an AGENTS.md in the repo for architecture context, 5–10 skills for repetitive workflows (review, commits, docs, testing), and 2–3 MCP servers for the services you touch daily (DB, CI/CD, monitoring). It also pushes a safe-adoption ladder — let agents add tests and fix small bugs first, then low-risk refactors, then dependency/doc sync, and only then cross-module feature work.

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Sources: AI Builder Club survey · Agent configuration guide