program.md (Agent Research Instruction File)
emergingOrigin: Andrej Karpathy, autoresearch project, March 2026
A document specifying a complete research methodology that an AI agent executes indefinitely. Part of Karpathy's autoresearch project. The `program.md` file is to autoresearch what WORKFLOW.md is to Symphony — the agent's operating contract. Represents the 'document as program' paradigm for agentic workflows.
Usage
'Have you written a program.md for this?' is an emerging check for whether someone is doing real agentic engineering or just running prompts.
Shelf life: Emerging — will spread through the AI research and developer community