claude-standing-orders: Instructions file for Claude Code

claude-standing-orders

This repository is the orchestrator–worker package. user/ installs into ~/.claude/ on every machine, so a change here changes how Claude Code behaves everywhere the package is installed — not just in this checkout.

This repo does not keep a changelog, a decision log, or agent memory

Deliberate exception to rules/session-continuity.md, which this package itself ships and which remains correct for every other repository. The reasons are specific to this one:

• It is a distributable package, not a codebase a team works in day to day. A maintainer's session narrative would ship to everyone who clones it.
• docs/DESIGN-RATIONALE.md already records why the package is shaped the way it is. A decision log alongside it would be a second home for the same facts.
• A repository with no continuity files produces no session brief. That is session-brief.mjs behaving as documented, not a gap to fix.

So: do not create docs/changelogs/, docs/decisions/, or .claude/agent-memory/ here. .gitignore already blocks the last one. Record what changed and why in the commit message.

Product references are not this repo's own usage

user/, project-template/, examples/, and INSTALL.md mention docs/changelogs/, docs/decisions/DECISIONS.md, docs/adr/, and .claude/continuity.json throughout. Those describe what onboarded projects do. They are the product. Removing them to make the repo "consistent" breaks the package. When unsure whether a reference is product or this repo's own practice, it is product — leave it.

Conventions

• Aliases, never version numbers, in agent config. Agents pin opus / sonnet / haiku. The one exception is the Claude Code version floor, which is a real runtime dependency rather than a model choice: it lives in user/version-floor.json and nowhere else. bootstrap.mjs substitutes it into settings.template.json at install time (__MIN_VERSION__), session-brief.mjs warns against it, and bootstrap.mjs doctor checks it. Never restate the number in prose — reference the file.
• No effort field on a model: haiku agent. Haiku does not support effort levels; the setting is silently ignored, which asserts a guarantee the runtime never provides.
• Nothing personal ships. No real names, absolute home paths, private project names, or content from a private conversation — in any file, including docs and comments.
• Hook paths are generated, not committed. settings.template.json carries __CLAUDE_HOME__; bootstrap.mjs resolves it per machine.
• Observability hooks fail open. session-brief.mjs, worker-ledger.mjs, packet-check.mjs, compact-state.mjs, and verify-reminder.mjs must exit 0 on every path, including malformed input. There is no authorization boundary among them, and none of them may block even where the event would allow it: packet-check.mjs runs on PreToolUse and must never emit permissionDecision: "deny", and compact-state.mjs and verify-reminder.mjs must never block, though PreCompact and Stop both permit it. verify-reminder.mjs is additionally inert unless a project opts in via verifyCommands — it must never infer verification commands.
• A hook is not verified until its real payload has been seen. packet-check.mjs shipped reading a prompt_text field that no Claude Code release ever sent, and every static check in this repo passed while it did nothing. Exercise a hook against a payload captured from a live run — verify-repo.mjs pins the fields each one depends on for exactly this reason.
• Stop fires every assistant turn, not once per session. Anything hooked there scans incrementally from a saved offset and short-circuits before doing real work.
• No subprocess on the session-start path. session-brief.mjs derives the Claude Code version from CLAUDE_CODE_EXECPATH and stays silent when it cannot. claude --version costs 0.26–1.5s and belongs in doctor, which the user ran on purpose.