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Anatomy of the .claude/ folder

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Re: Anatomy of the .claude/ folder

#91

Post by fogzen »

63stack wrote: post #30

The article starts off really weak: >Claude Code users typically treat the .claude folder like a black box. They know it exists. They’ve seen it appear in their project root. But they’ve never opened it, let alone understood what every file inside it does. I know we are living in a post-engineering world now, but you can't tell me that people don't look at PRs anymore, or their own diffs, at least until/if they decid…

I don't. I have Claude do all my PR reviews, running in a daily loop in the morning. The truth is an LLM is better at code review than the average programmer.

I'm a senior engineer who has been shipping code since before GitHub and PR reviews was a thing. Thankfully LLMs have freed me from being asked to read other people's shit code for hours every day.

Re: Anatomy of the .claude/ folder

#92

Post by Aurornis »

exitb wrote: post #17

I’m seeing this more and more, where people build this artificial wall you supposedly need to climb to try agentic coding. That’s not the right way to start at all. You should start with a fresh .claude, empty AGENTS.md, zero skills and MCP and learn to operate the thing first.

This article isn't saying you must set up a big .claude folder before you start. It repeats several times that it's important to start small and keep it short.

It's also not targeted at first-timers getting their first taste of AI coding. It's a guide for how to use these tools to deal with frustrations you will inevitably encounter with AI coding.

Though really, many of the complaints about AI coding on HN are written by beginners who would also benefit from a simple .claude configuration that includes their preferences and some guidelines. A frequent complaint from people who do drive-by tests of AI coding tools before giving up is that the tools aren't reading their mind or the tools keep doing things the user doesn't want. Putting a couple lines into AGENTS.md or the .claude folder can fix many of those problems quickly.

Re: Anatomy of the .claude/ folder

#93

Post by giancarlostoro »

The real wall I never see people talking about is, yes, you can tell Claude to update whatever file you want, but you have to be aware that if it's .claude/INSTRUCTIONS.md or CLAUDE.md that you need to tell Claude to re-read those files because it wrote the contents but its not treating it as if it were fresh instructions, it will run off whatever the last time it read that file was, so if it never existed, it will not know. I believe Claude puts those instructions in a very specific part of its context window.

Re: Anatomy of the .claude/ folder

#94

Post by IanCal »

sceptic123 wrote: post #65
jameshart wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but as soon as you start checking in and sharing access to a project with other developers these things become shared. Working out how to work on code on your own with agentic support is one thing. Working out how to work on it as a team where each developer is employing agentic tools is a whole different ballgame.

But why is it different? Why does it need to be? I don't write code the same as other devs so why would/should I use AI the same? Is this a hangover from when the tools were not as good?

> I don't write code the same as other devs

Most people do, most people don’t have wildly different setups do they? I’d bet there’s a lot in common between how you write code and how your coworkers do.

Re: Anatomy of the .claude/ folder

#95

Post by himmi-01 »

mitchell_h wrote: post #76
georgeburdell wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my own group, agentic coding made sharing and collaboration go out the window because Claude will happily duplicate a bunch of code in a custom framework

In my AGENTS.md I have two lines in almost every single one: - Under no condition should you use emoji's. - Before adding a new function, method or class. Scan the project code base, and attached frame works to verify that something else can not be modified to fit the needs.

I'm curious about the token usage when it scans across multiple repositories to finding similar methods. As our code grows so fast, is it sustainable ?

Re: Anatomy of the .claude/ folder

#98

Post by Normal_gaussian »

sergiotapia wrote: post #96

In my experience fewer skills is significantly better. When you have this performative folder of skills the AI wastes a bunch of tool calls, gets confused, doesn't get to the meat of the problem. beware!

Yeah skills get loaded into context which in effect pollutes context.

Re: Anatomy of the .claude/ folder

#99

Post by ontouchstart »

phyzix5761 wrote: post #28

Is there a completely free coding assistant agent that doesn't require you to give a credit card to use it? I recently tried IntelliJ for Kotlin development and it wanted me to give a credit card for a 30 day trial. I just want something that scans my repo and I tell it the changes I want and it does it. If possible, it would also run the existing tests to make sure its changes don't break anything.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47533611

It is fun to use.

Re: Anatomy of the .claude/ folder

#100

Post by hbarka »

frotaur wrote: post #80
ramon156 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LinkedIn loves these, even if they're broken. But they had already lost me at all the links, and the fact there's not a red wire through the entire article. The first thing my eyes skimmed was: > CLAUDE.md: Claude’s instruction manual > This is the most important file in the entire system. When you start a Claude Code session, the first thing it reads is CLAUDE.md. It loads it straight into the system prompt and keep…

Are you certain? My understanding was that this is automatically injected in the context, and in my experience that's how it worked. I never see 'ReadFile(claude.md)', and yet claude is aware of some conventions I put in there.

They’re mistaken. CLAUDE.md is always loaded into context, along with system prompts and memory files.

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

“CLAUDE.md files are loaded into the context window at the start of every session”

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