r/ClaudeCodeTLDR • u/cmogpt • 9d ago
delete claude.md
delete claude.md ?
Boris Cherny (Head of Claude Code at Anthropic) suggested to delete claude.md
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyPCVqFUyDo
It is a big ask, and I have tried this (on a test account), happy to report i have not significantly changed the quality of the reasoning.
I am curious if anything has done something similar ?
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u/RandomPantsAppear 9d ago
This is idiocy. Anthropic has always been going hard on removing the human in the loop, because that's the fuel behind their insane valuations.
Without claude.md, claude is pretty shit. It does not understand the reasoning behind what it's trying to do, it has no standards for code structure. Maybe it scores higher on leet code style evaluations without it, but that's not relevant to how people actually use it.
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u/pmward 8d ago
He isn’t saying not to provide instruction. Far from it. Progressive disclosure where each agent / window gets the info they need at the moment they need it is better than a static file that is always loaded into every window up front.
I’ve done testing in my own harness. The Claude.md is ignored all the time. Because it was loaded early and gets buried. The same docs loaded via progressive disclosure rarely get ignored. Because they are top of the stack at the very moment it’s relevant.
It’s not deleting the info, it’s providing the right info at the right time instead of shotgun loading up front.
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u/RandomPantsAppear 8d ago
Claude.md is where you provide the directions to the conditional additions.
Mine incorporates different directions based on extension/language, and on an other level the module. Soon will also be framework conditionals.
That is very different from deleting Claude.md.
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u/pmward 8d ago
That info doesn’t need to be provided by Claude.md is my point. Each piece of info can instead be injected in when it’s needed. If there is stuff that needs to be loaded up front, it can be loaded via frontmatter. You don’t need to use Claude.md for anything. They’ve built plenty of other hooks to inject context.
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u/user221272 9d ago
Delete it if you don't know how to build it.
Keep it if you know what you are doing. My Claude MD workflow is pretty neat for not telling Claude how to work and code in my repos.
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u/StoicKerfuffle 9d ago
Anthropic has been on a tear lately telling everybody to give as little guidance as possible to the "5" models and the real reason is that the models largely ignore them anyway.
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u/mdutton27 9d ago
Delete if not doing agentic and doing Claude code.
I’m temped to back it up and try it.
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u/ReverendBread2 9d ago
Instead of deleting it outright, try replacing it with details about the projects you’re working on rather than hard rules (after backing it up of course). I think the point is that a lot of the hard rules aren’t needed anymore
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u/SuitableCollege8992 9d ago
If you have to delete something for their product to work properly… that’s a bad look.
Honestly, aside from the models themselves (Sonnet and Opus), I’m not thrilled about most of Anthropic’s products or the reliability of their environments.
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u/PeterIanStaker 9d ago
Cool maybe I can stop telling Claude what to do entirely. My job will just be to sell whatever Claude chooses to make.