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Marginal

Qwen Code

Qwen Code is Alibaba’s terminal coding agent. Its context file is QWEN.md, with AGENTS.md as a second name, and its skills, sub-agents, and commands live in .qwen folders.

Select it in Settings ▸ AI ▸ Coding agent.

What Marginal lists

Section titled “What Marginal lists”
Section In the workspace In your home folder
QWEN.md QWEN.md and AGENTS.md, in the root and in any subfolder; .qwen/QWEN.local.md at the root, badged local ~/.qwen/QWEN.md, ~/.qwen/AGENTS.md
SKILLS .qwen/skills/*/SKILL.md, .agents/skills/*/SKILL.md ~/.qwen/skills, ~/.agents/skills
AGENTS .qwen/agents/*.md ~/.qwen/agents/*.md
COMMANDS .qwen/commands/**/*.md and *.toml ~/.qwen/commands/**/*.md and *.toml

Qwen Code has no rules folder, so there is no RULES section.

QWEN_HOME, when set in the environment Marginal was launched from, replaces ~/.qwen. It does not move ~/.agents/skills, which Qwen Code keys on your home directory.

Commands in a subfolder are namespaced with a colon, the way Qwen Code names them: git/commit.md is /git:commit.

How Qwen Code uses these files

Section titled “How Qwen Code uses these files”
  • QWEN.md is read from your home folder, then from every directory from the current one up through the project root, root first. The names it looks for come from the context.fileName setting, QWEN.md and AGENTS.md by default; setting it replaces the list, so a setting of AGENTS.md alone drops QWEN.md. .qwen/QWEN.local.md at the git root is the per-machine file, read only in a trusted folder. @path lines import other files, up to five levels deep. There is no .qwen/QWEN.md; Qwen Code does not read one, and Marginal does not look for it. Nothing is scanned downward into subfolders, so a nested QWEN.md applies when Qwen Code runs from that folder.
  • Skills are SKILL.md folders with a required name and description, one level deep, found at the git root in .qwen/skills and .agents/skills. Each skill is also a /name command. Archived and pending skills in .qwen/archived-skills and .qwen/pending-skills are not loaded and not listed.
  • Sub-agents in .qwen/agents are markdown with a front matter name, description, model, approvalMode, tools, and more; the body is the system prompt. Claude Code’s permissionMode values are accepted as aliases. Project beats user on a name clash.
  • Commands are markdown with an optional description, argument-hint, and when_to_use in the front matter, and {{args}} in the body. TOML commands with a prompt key are the older form: still loaded, with a prompt to migrate them.

Skills and sub-agents are found from the git root; commands and settings from the directory Qwen Code was started in.

Not listed

Section titled “Not listed”

.qwen/settings.json and ~/.qwen/settings.json (including hooks and MCP servers defined there), .qwen/.env, .qwenignore, extensions under ~/.qwen/extensions, agent plugins, memory under ~/.qwen/projects, and the system settings under /Library/Application Support/QwenCode, /etc/qwen-code, or C:\ProgramData\qwen-code.

Checked against the Qwen Code documentation and source on 1 September 2026.