AI coding agents are changing how developers onboard to new tools, making manual install scripts and framework-specific quickstarts obsolete. Tigris shipped `tigris init --agent`, a CLI command that prints a plain-text setup prompt for any AI agent to execute. The post argues that agents already know a project's stack, conventions, and environment better than any generic setup script can, making them ideal onboarding engineers. Key prompt-writing principles are covered: ask permission before acting, prefer heuristics over mandates, keep secrets out of the context window, and phrase instructions positively. A practical limitation is also addressed — agents can't reliably install their own plugins mid-session, so agent configuration must happen outside an active agent session. The post concludes that agent-native onboarding is becoming the new baseline for developer tooling.
