Where does the product description sit in your project so the ai can reference it? Is it like a summary form that describes what the project basically should do or be used for, asking for a friend

It's right in CLAUDE.md

For take #1 I said what tech to use and a high level description of the game and it's features. I guess I failed to mention this part, but when I threw take #1 away, I first used Claude + hand editing to update it to have a detailed description of each screen and feature in the game. So take #2 had a much more detailed description of exactly what was going to be built, but still, right in CLAUDE.md

I did also create a DEVELOPMENT-PLAN.md first with Claude and have been having it update it with what's been done before every commit. I don't know yet have a good idea of how impactful that part has been.