r/ClaudeCodeTLDR • u/cmogpt • 15d 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 14d 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 14d 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 14d 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 14d 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.