Comment by nico

READMEs are written for people, CLAUDE.mds are written for coding assistants. I don’t write “CRITICAL (PRIORITY 0):” in READMEs.

The benefit of CLAUDE.md files is that they’re pulled in automatically, eg if Claude wants to read “tests/foo_test.py” it will automatically pull in “tests/CLAUDE.md” (if it exists).

That also clears the context; a command would just append to the context.

yes, when you discover it. but the reason why I said just wondering was I was trying to think of unexpected ways it could effect things, that was the top one I could think of (and not really sure if it is a possibility)

I guess I assumed that it's not highly relevant to the task, but I suppose it depends on interpretation. E.g. if someone tells the bus driver to smile while he drives, it's hopefully clear that actually driving the bus is more important than smiling.

Having experimented with similar config, I found that Claude would adhere to the instructions somewhat reliably at the beginning and end of the conversation, but was likely to ignore during the middle where the real work is being done. Recent versions also seem to be more context-aware, and tend to start rushing to wrap up as the context is nearing compaction. These behaviors seem to support my assumption, but I have no real proof.

It will also let the LLM process even more tokens, thus decreasing it's accuracy

It's also a common tactic for filtering inbound email.

Mention that people may optionally include some word like 'orange' in the subject line to tell you they've come via some place like your blog or whatever it may be, and have read at least carefully enough to notice this.

Of course ironically that trick's probably trivially broken now because of use of LLMs in spam. But the point stands, it's an old trick.

> I suspect you’re misjudging the friend here. This sounds more like the famous “no brown m&ms” clause in the Van Halen performance contract. As ridiculous as the request is, it being followed provides strong evidence that the rest (and more meaningful) of the requests are.

I'd argue, it's more like you've bought so much into the idea this is reasonable, that you're also willing to go through extreme lengths to recon and pretend like this is sane.

Imagine two different worlds, one where the tools that engineers use, have a clear, and reasonable way to detect and determine if the generative subsystem is still on the rails provided by the controller.

And another world where the interface is completely devoid of any sort of basic introspection interface, and because it's a problematic mess, all the way down, everyone invents some asinine way that they believe provides some sort of signal as to whether or not the random noise generator has gone off the rails.

> Sounds like the friend understands quite well how LLMs actually work and has found a clever way to be signaled when it’s starting to go off the rails.

My point is that while it's a cute hack, if you step back and compare it objectively, to what good engineering would look like. It's wild so many people are all just willing to accept this interface as "functional" because it means they don't have to do the thinking that required to emit the output the AI is able to, via the specific randomness function used.

Imagine these two worlds actually do exist; and instead of using the real interface that provides a clear bool answer to "the generative system has gone off the rails" they *want* to be called Mr Tinkerberry

Which world do you think this example lives in? You could convince me, Mr Tinkleberry is a cute example of the latter, obviously... but it'd take effort to convince me that this reality is half reasonable or that's it's reasonable that people who would want to call themselves engineers should feel proud to be a part of this one.

Before you try to strawman my argument, this isn't a gatekeeping argument. It's only a critical take on the interface options we have to understand something that might as well be magic, because that serves the snakeoil sales much better.

> > Is the magic token machine working?

> Fuck I have no idea dude, ask it to call you a funny name, if it forgets the funny name it's probably broken, and you need to reset it

Yes, I enjoy working with these people and living in this world.