Remix.run Logo
dotancohen 13 hours ago

  > I add to my team’s CLAUDE.md multiple times a week.
How big is that file now? How big is too big?
kxrm 12 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Something to keep in mind is if your CLAUDE.md file is getting large, consider alternative approaches especially for repeatable tasks. Using slash commands and skills for workflows that are repeatable is a really nice way to keep your rules file from exploding. I have slash commands for code review, and git commit management. I have skills for complex tool interactions. Our company has it's own deployment CLI tool so using skills to make Claude Code an expert at using this tool has done wonders to improve Claude Codes performance when working on CI/CD problems.

I am currently working on a new slash command /investigate <service> that runs triage for an active or past incident. I've had Claude write tools to interact with all of our partner services (AWS, JIRA, CI/CD pipelines, GitLab, Datadog) and now when an incident occurs it can quickly put together an early analysis of a incident finding the right people to involve (not just owners but people who last touched the service), potential root causes including service dependency investigations.

I am putting this through it's paces now but early results are VERY good!

bcherny 13 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Try to keep it under 1k tokens or so. We will show you a warning if it might be too big.

Ours is maybe half that size. We remove from it with every model release since smarter models need less hand-holding.

You can also break up your CLAUDE.md into smaller files, link CLAUDE.mds, or lazy load them only when Claude works in nested dirs.

https://code.claude.com/docs/en/memory

bgilly 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I’ve been fine tuning mine pretty often. Do you have any Claude.md files you can share as good examples? Especially with opus 4.5.

And thank you for your work!! I focus all of my energy on helping families stay safe online, I make educational content and educational products (including software). Claude Code has helped me amplify my efforts and I’m able to help many more families and children as a result. The downstream effects of your work on Claude Code are awesome! I’ve been in IT since 1995 and your tools are the most powerful tools I’ve ever used, by far.

blobbers 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

1k tokens, google says thats about 750 words. That's actually pretty short, any chance you could post a few samples of instructions or even link to a publicly available file CLAUDE.md you recommend?

dotancohen 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That is seriously short. I've asked Claude Code to add instructions to CLAUDE.md and my one line request has resulted in tens of lines added to the file.

hanska 9 hours ago | parent [-]

yes if you tell llm to do things it will be too verbose. either explicitly instruct the length ("add 5 lines bulletpoints, tldr format") or just write it yourself.

songodongo 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

crickets

tomviner 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

How do you know what to remove?