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GuideAI DevelopmentAugust 20, 2026

The One File That Makes Claude Code Smarter

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A guide to the CLAUDE.md instruction set distilled from Andrej Karpathy's notes: four behavioral rules that stop Claude over-engineering, guessing, making random edits and declaring work done before it's verified.

What's inside
  • Think before coding: no more silent assumptions
  • Simplicity first: 50 lines where it would have written 200
  • Surgical changes: stop it "improving" working code
  • Goal-driven execution: it verifies before claiming done
  • Install commands, plus why to use only the official repo

It Tells Claude What Not to Do

A single CLAUDE.md file, built from Andrej Karpathy's notes on where AI coding goes wrong. Drop it into your project and Claude stops over-engineering, stops guessing, and starts double-checking its own work. No dependencies, no setup — just an instruction set.


The Four Rules

Think before coding — state assumptions and ask when the request is ambiguous, instead of silently picking one interpretation. Simplicity first — write the minimum code that solves the task; 50 lines where it would have written 200. Surgical changes — touch only what the task needs and leave working code alone instead of "improving" it. Goal-driven execution — turn the task into a success criterion and loop until it's actually verified.


What's in the Guide

What each rule stops, the plugin commands to add it to every project in seconds, and an important safety note: install it only from the official repo, since a CLAUDE.md from a random cloned repo can carry malicious instructions.

The full breakdown is in the PDF.


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