What is patina CLAUDE.md?

Project instructions for Patina, a command-line tool that captures, organizes, and applies project context while working with Claude.

They guide development, building, linting, and the flow from capturing context to reviewing and applying changes to documentation.

They explain how captured context, sessions, runs, differences, and files are stored and connected.

How lcvbeek/patina configures Claude Code

Reuse

Borrowing it

Nothing to install: this file belongs to lcvbeek/patina. Take a copy, put it at the same path in your own repository, and replace the rules that are about this project with yours.

Copy the file

curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/lcvbeek/patina/main/CLAUDE.md

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/lcvbeek/patina

Made for: Claude Code.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/lcvbeek/patina/claude-md/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/instructions/lcvbeek/patina/claude-md)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/instructions/lcvbeek/patina/claude-md"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/lcvbeek/patina/claude-md/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

Your own site · 80×15

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/instructions/lcvbeek/patina/claude-md"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/lcvbeek/patina/claude-md.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>

Per session 270 This file is loaded in full into every session.

When invoked 270 The same file — it is already loaded in full.

Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.

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.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5.1	$0.00270	$0.00270
Opus 5.5	$0.00108	$0.00108
Sonnet 5.5	$0.00054	$0.00054
Haiku 4.5	$0.00027	$0.00027

Measured 2mo ago against content hash 95ed6672419a, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

patina 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 2mo ago.

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 · 31 lines

What it actually says

Patina CLI

Development

npm run dev          # tsx (no build)
npm run build        # TypeScript → dist/
npm start            # Run compiled output
npx markdownlint-cli2 "**/*.md"  # Lint

Architecture

Command flow:

capture → .patina/captures/<id>.json
ingest → .patina/sessions/*.json
run → Claude CLI (via spawn) → .patina/cycles/<date>.md
diff → show pending changes
buff → apply diffs to PATINA.md or spoke files

Key design:

Claude invoked via CLI subprocess in src/lib/claude.ts, not SDK
.patina/ partially git-tracked: core + cycles + captures committed; sessions/metrics/pending ignored
Hub+spoke: PATINA.md core (sections 1-3), spoke files in .patina/context/ (on-demand sections 4-6)
Session dedup by session_id; token estimation via chars / 4 heuristic
Pending reflection recovery to .patina/pending-reflection.json

@.patina/PATINA.md

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.

2mo ago First seen · 31 lines · 270 tokens per session scan A 95ed6672419a

Subscribe to this mod's changes

patina CLAUDE.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository lcvbeek/patina (5 stars, last pushed 5mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 270 tokens to every session, about $0.0011 per session on Opus 5.5. 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 2026-08-31.

Memory and context agent ai claude harness harness-engineering retrospective

patina CLAUDE.md next to 6 instructions from other repositories
Mod	Type	Stars	Last push	Licence	Scan	Tokens	Works with
patina CLAUDE.mdlcvbeek/patina	Instructions file	5	5mo ago	MIT	A	270	Claude Code
vscode buildNext.instructions.mdmicrosoft/vscode	Instructions file	195k	yesterday	MIT	A	9,719	GitHub Copilot
next.js AGENTS.mdvercel/next.js	Instructions file	143k	yesterday	MIT	A	7,461	Codex, OpenCode
langchain AGENTS.mdlangchain-ai/langchain	Instructions file	149k	yesterday	MIT	A	4,680	Codex, OpenCode
vscode oss-third-party-notices.instructions.mdmicrosoft/vscode	Instructions file	195k	yesterday	MIT	A	5,516	GitHub Copilot
vscode copilot-instructions.mdmicrosoft/vscode	Instructions file	195k	yesterday	MIT	A	3,093	GitHub Copilot
deepseek-harness AGENTS.mddeepseek-ai/deepseek-harness	Instructions file	274k	2d ago	MIT	A	4,313	Codex, OpenCode

patina: Instructions file for Claude Code