chroma CLAUDE.md

A set of coding rules for the Chroma codebase, including commit-message formatting, line-length guidance, and tests backed by Tilt, a development-environment tool.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when changing Chroma code, writing commit messages, or adding and running tests.
Why use it?
It keeps contributions consistent and makes commits, reviews, and tests easier to understand across the project.

Instructions file

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add instructions/chroma-core/chroma/claude-md
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/chroma-core/chroma
Per session 535 This file is loaded in full into every session.
When invoked 535 The same file — it is already loaded in full.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00535 $0.00535
Opus 5 $0.00267 $0.00267
Sonnet 5 $0.00107 $0.00107
Haiku 4.5 $0.00053 $0.00053

Measured yesterday against content hash 36fbe3342bf0, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

chroma CLAUDE.md scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured yesterday.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

CLAUDE.md · 56 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 56 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Chroma Codebase Guidelines

Commit Message Style

Use the [TYPE](scope): Description format:

[ENH](rust-client): Add retry middleware
[BUG](rust-client): Fix connection timeout on retry
[TST](gc): Add MCMR hard delete integration test
[DOC](api): Update embeddings endpoint docs
[CHORE](deps): Bump reqwest to 0.13

Common types: ENH (feature/enhancement), BUG (fix), TST (test), DOC (docs), CHORE (maintenance/refactor), BLD (build system changes).

Scope is optional but encouraged — use the component name (e.g. rust-client, gc, dashboard-api).

50/72 Rule

  • Subject line: ≤ 50 characters. Keeps it readable in git log --oneline, GitHub PR lists, and rebase tooling.
  • Blank line between subject and body (required — many tools use this to split them).
  • Body lines: wrap at 72 characters. Leaves room for indentation in 80-column terminals and email patch workflows.
  • Imperative mood in the subject: "Add login command", not "Added" or "Adds". Matches Git's own generated messages.
  • Body explains what and why, not how — the diff shows how.

With the [TYPE](scope): prefix, aim to keep the whole subject under 50 chars. If the scope makes that tight, drop it — the type alone is fine.

Tilt-Backed Tests

Tests named test_k8s_integration depend on a local Tilt-managed Kubernetes environment and should not be run blindly.

Before running these tests, ensure Tilt is already running and the local services are ready. In this repo, the key readiness signals are:

  • frontend healthcheck responds on http://localhost:8000/api/v2/healthcheck
  • Spanner emulator is reachable on localhost:9010
  • required Kubernetes pods in the chroma namespace are Ready

If a task requires running test_k8s_integration tests and Tilt is not clearly ready yet, do one of these before running the tests:

  • verify an existing Tilt environment is ready and then run the tests
  • start or restart Tilt, wait for readiness, and only then run the tests

Read the full file on GitHub · 56 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. yesterday First seen · 56 lines · 535 tokens per session scan A 36fbe3342bf0

Subscribe to this mod's changes

chroma CLAUDE.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository chroma-core/chroma (29,182 stars, last pushed 3d ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 535 tokens to every session, about $0.0027 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

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