Comment by lkbm
2 months ago
A little. Thanks for the detailed reply. But I wouldn't expect a smaller, more targeted Claude.md would make a big difference. My impression is that we're filling up the context less with Claude.md than with the session work: back and forth about the specific task, Claude's chain-of-thought as it does that, the relevant sections of code, etc. That's what this is trying to compact and reference, iiuc.
What I'd think would help, would be doing things in smaller chunks: an agent to do this small subtask, another to do that small subtask, and the parent task context only grows with the sub-agents reporting back, not with their chain-of-thought.
Could be I should have a much bigger, more detailed Claude.md. Mine tend to be small project overviews and a list of TODOs, not that different from README.md: https://github.com/lkbm/sideways_math/blob/main/CLAUDE.md
It does make a big difference in the sense that the less you tell it about things that aren't relevant to it's task, the better it performs.
This has been found in all sorts of variations, and is accepted. It's not just my word, it's the standard understanding. But also, it's true in my experience.
You also limit the session work when you are offloading to agents, which are calling skills. So it does do that as well.
But that's what we're talking about, having agents do things in smaller chunks. Maybe I didn't explain that clearly enough?
It's just a complex topic. It's hard to cover everything. But yet, that's part of the idea. We're making context very specific to the task, and cutting things up into smaller chunks with dedicated context windows only for that task.
I almost completely ignore Claude.md - there are very few rules I want every subtask to know about.
the main system is for cordination, of the many agents with their own dedicated Claude.mds which call their own skills with their own dedicated instructions.
It's like Russian dolls. Now, I do use much, much MUCH larger Agent mds than anyone else. I've been doing this for 10 months, and I believe it's the correct way to do it.
I intend to write a blog post on it, it's a topic in it's own part.
Even your small Claude.md - I would have in several files. The Typescript agent is the only one that needs to know about the Typescript details. This is the kind of thing I mean.