Based on the discussion with @DamianEdwards @glennc @davidfowl and others today, the UserSecrets configuration provider should read project.json from the same location used for configuration files, i.e. it should use the IFileProvider obtained from configurationBuilder.GetFileProvider() to read the file.
In addition, if the project.json file is not found it shouldn't fail.
@muratg we need someone to make this change for RC2.