Yeah, in fact you can actually make the model perform worst. You should allow the model to "think for itself" instead of pushing your reasoning into the prompt. You should give it simple prompt and steer it along the way.

Skills, CLAUDE.md/AGENTS.md should only ever be used if the model struggle at something or doesn't know how to use something. Vast majority of project should never need a skill or CLAUDE.md. If you writing React apps you don't need these.

Give a LLM a bash tool and a prompt and it will outperform your complex setup with skills and tools.

No, we still need CLAUDE.md to override bad system prompt goals. The system prompt goes for the simple fast solution, no error handling, no hardening, no abstractions, but overly verbose comments. Vast amount of people need to override this AI slop.