Shopify’s CEO threatened to ban Claude Code. Anthropic had already closed the feature request.

Shopify's CEO Tobi Lütke is contemplating banning Claude Code at the company, not due to any dissatisfaction with Anthropic's coding agent, but because of a Markdown file. Lütke posted on X about his intention to ban Claude Code until they make changes to their file structure. Despite seeming like a minor disagreement, it could lead to bigger issues in a company as large as Shopify.

With thousands of developers working in a single monorepo, each using different AI coding tools, inconsistencies can arise. Lütke emphasized that while they have automated solutions, it is an unnecessary complexity tax for engineers.

Now, with more capable coding agents, engineering teams require methods to provide persistent instructions for codebases. This led to the creation of files like AGENTS.md and CLAUDE.md. Developers can include build commands, testing requirements, and coding conventions in these files, allowing agents to access the information without constant reminders. However, the problem arises when different coding tools do not follow the same convention.

OpenAI introduced AGENTS.md in August 2025, quickly adopted by over 60,000 open-source projects and agent frameworks. Anthropic's Claude Code, however, uses CLAUDE.md for project instructions and does not natively read AGENTS.md. Anthropic acknowledged developers' requests for support but closed the feature request as "not planned." Shopify, however, has already built automation to address this issue, acknowledging it as another job for platform teams as more coding agents are integrated into repositories.