CLAUDE.md

🎥 Video lesson — video not yet migrated (source Skool video id: 5885abc990504e83864dbc0b72b307e8).

Every time you start a new Claude Code session, it knows nothing about you. Your name, your business, your preferences — blank slate. Every single time. Imagine hiring a brilliant employee who shows up on day one knowing nothing about your company. They'll do okay work, but it'll be generic. Not great.

CLAUDE.md changes that. It's a plain text file that Claude Code reads automatically before you even type your first message. You write it in plain English — things like "I run an AI agency," "keep responses short," "always use plan mode for big projects." No code required. It's essentially a system prompt.

There are three levels that work together. The global CLAUDE.md lives in your home folder's hidden .claude directory — this is about YOU and applies to every project. The project CLAUDE.md lives inside a specific project folder — rules for that project only. The private CLAUDE.md is stored separately but linked to a project — personal notes that collaborators can't see. Claude Code reads all three and merges them into one combined context before your first message.

The key insight: anything in CLAUDE.md is permanent context. It never gets compressed or summarized away during long conversations — unlike everything else in your session. And you don't need to manually edit these files. Just tell Claude Code "update my CLAUDE.md with the following" and it handles it.