A planted file in Downloads hijacked coding agents — secure the harness
T
TechgainAuthor
18 min read · 26 October 2026
In October 2026 a malicious AGENTS.md file sitting in a customer's Downloads folder pushed a coding agent toward installing a known-malicious npm package — and the fix is not a patch, because no software bug was involved. The attack worked by design: agents are built to obey instruction files, and the folder a browser can write to on its own is the folder agents trust.