Teaching AI Agents Your Way: Rule Files for Express Projects

AI agents are capable coders but don't inherently understand your project's implicit conventions—leading to mixed response patterns, ignored error handlers, and repetitive code review feedback. Rule files (CLAUDE.md, .cursorrules, AGENTS.md) solve this by encoding project-specific standards into the repository and automatically loading them into agent context, transforming repetitive corrections into enforced consistency from the first suggestion. This is particularly impactful in Express projects, where subtle routing and error-handling patterns can make the difference between reliable and brittle code.