I might be missing out on something but I never had to explain my project. Just give it a task, or if you really want to, type it quickly, then you are good to go.
I can’t imagine this being worth optimizing. The issue is never that Claude can’t figure out what the projects is about…
Am I missing something or does this project not solve a problem most regular people have?
There are many other posts here which agree with you. Filling context with what you think the model needs adds nothing and possibly just inflates context which is harmful.
A good method seems to be only make a skill or memory when the LLM gets something wrong, or if you actually observe it's always doing the same step and you can get the model to the same place with less tokens.
I’ve basically never edited a skill or memory myself. I make the LLM do it as part of the /handoff skill before I clear a session. That also includes pruning existing skills/memories and resolving any drift.
I think the majority here have stated the same... That CLAUDE.md or AGENTS.md effectively do this. Either that or the readme.
The only tip I can give is that your skill that builds or wraps up work. You should have it update those files if anything has changed.
Claude/Agents files shouldn't be bloated, but should imho act as a basic amount of context on the project so your agent and skills can pick up and go, with even the most basic initial prompt.
> The only tip I can give is that your skill that builds or wraps up work. You should have it update those files if anything has changed.
Depending on the scope of work you’re doing, it might be better to have this removed from the context of the work that was done.
I keep a “Last Updated Hash” in my md and every so often will have the LLM pull a diff from that hash to the current head, then determine what doesn’t match.
CLAUDE.md is already a good system for context window management for all the same reasons that version control management of code is good.
And keeping a local copy of everything you ever told Claude in your context window is bad for the same reasons keeping a local copy of your code called My_Code_v3_final.zip is bad.
I never have to because I use a ticketing system the model goes through in addition to a CLAUDE.md file with a summary, including vision, goals, non-goals etc
Any tricks to get Claude to actually use the CLAUDE.md consistently? Many times now its completely ignored it, despite being short, concise + generated by Claude itself, and I see bug reports about this that are over a year old
Check out your session logs and review what is actually in the context window. I’m willing to bet that your CLAUDE.md is sitting close to the middle of everything in there. The current gen of frontier models tends to heavily weight the start and end of the current context so heavily that anything partway through may just be ignored.
I can’t imagine this being worth optimizing. The issue is never that Claude can’t figure out what the projects is about…
Am I missing something or does this project not solve a problem most regular people have?
A good method seems to be only make a skill or memory when the LLM gets something wrong, or if you actually observe it's always doing the same step and you can get the model to the same place with less tokens.
Even the /handoff skill was written by the model…
Not sure I’d call that “stopping wasting my tokens”.
The only tip I can give is that your skill that builds or wraps up work. You should have it update those files if anything has changed.
Claude/Agents files shouldn't be bloated, but should imho act as a basic amount of context on the project so your agent and skills can pick up and go, with even the most basic initial prompt.
Depending on the scope of work you’re doing, it might be better to have this removed from the context of the work that was done.
I keep a “Last Updated Hash” in my md and every so often will have the LLM pull a diff from that hash to the current head, then determine what doesn’t match.
But if I may, the need to manually update the context is a huge hurdle.
Automation like this is limited unless no human has to remember it. So perhaps you can save context during the PreCompact and Stop hooks.
And keeping a local copy of everything you ever told Claude in your context window is bad for the same reasons keeping a local copy of your code called My_Code_v3_final.zip is bad.
I saw /graphify recently which cuts down on exploration cost and seems more appealing (although I haven’t tried it yet)
My advice: the best claude is the raw claude, with some custom tailored skills. That’s it, no plugins.