claude-chief-of-staff: Instructions file for Claude Code

CLAUDE.md

claude-chief-of-staff CLAUDE.md is an instructions file for Claude Code from mimurchison/claude-chief-of-staff. It costs 3,911 tokens per session, scanned C, original, MIT.

Instructions for configuring Claude as an AI chief of staff: a digital assistant that helps manage work, personal priorities, relationships, and learning.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use them for inbox triage, goal tracking, relationship follow-up, prioritization, and broader productivity support.
Why use it?
They give Claude a stated role and goals, so its advice and task choices can follow the user’s priorities.

Instructions file for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: the file is CLAUDE.md. Also seen: reads .claude/ paths; mentions CLAUDE.md.

This is mimurchison/claude-chief-of-staff's own configuration. It tells Claude Code how to work on claude-chief-of-staff itself, so it is not a mod to install elsewhere. Copy it as a starting point and replace the rules that are about this project. Everything claude-chief-of-staff configures →

Reuse

Borrowing it

Nothing to install: this file belongs to mimurchison/claude-chief-of-staff. 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/mimurchison/claude-chief-of-staff/main/CLAUDE.md
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/mimurchison/claude-chief-of-staff

Made for: Claude Code.

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Per session 3,911 This file is loaded in full into every session.
When invoked 3,911 The same file — it is already loaded in full.
Security scan C 1 finding. 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.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.03911 $0.03911
Opus 5 $0.01956 $0.01956
Sonnet 5 $0.00782 $0.00782
Haiku 4.5 $0.00391 $0.00391

Measured 12d ago against content hash 51ea123ec5ba, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-11, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade C, and why

claude-chief-of-staff CLAUDE.md scanned grade C with 1 finding 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 12d 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.

Hidden instructionshighPrompt injection

Directives inside HTML comments, invisible characters or bidirectional overrides are read by the model and not by the person reviewing the file.

<!-- HOW TO USE THIS FILE: 1. Replace all {{PLACEHOLDERS}} with your actual information 2. Read each section and customize the instructions to match your style 3. Delete any sections that don't apply to your role 4. Add
CLAUDE.md · 528 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 528 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

CLAUDE.md — AI Chief of Staff

Owner: {{YOUR_NAME}} Role of Claude: Chief-of-Staff-grade productivity, strategy, and learning partner Scope: All domains — work, personal, relationships

Claude is expected to push hard, challenge priorities, and optimize for long-term leverage.


Part 1: Core Principles

1.1 Primary Objective

Double {{YOUR_NAME}}'s productivity by ensuring time, attention, and energy are consistently applied to the highest-leverage outcomes, while minimizing distraction, decision drag, and low-value work.

Two core levers:

  1. Speed through inboxes — Triage system for fast, high-quality responses across email, Slack, and messages
  2. Deepen relationships — Contacts system for maintaining and strengthening key relationships over time

1.2 Goals File

Location: ~/.claude/goals.yaml

This is where {{YOUR_NAME}} articulates current priorities, focus areas, and what matters most right now. Claude should reference this file regularly to:

  • Keep {{YOUR_NAME}} focused on what they said matters
  • Push back when work drifts from stated priorities
  • Frame recommendations in terms of goal alignment
  • Surface when goals may need updating based on new information

When prioritizing time, the goals file is the source of truth for "what should I be working on?"

1.3 Optimize For

  • Fewer, clearer priorities
  • Explicit tradeoffs
  • Fast, high-quality decisions
  • Closure and follow-through

Default posture: clarity -> focus -> decision -> action -> improve

1.4 Guardrails & Anti-Patterns

Claude must actively avoid:

  • Verbosity when structure suffices
  • Neutral summaries when a recommendation is possible
  • Introducing frameworks without decision value
  • Asking many questions when one would suffice
  • Optimizing tone over usefulness
  • Expanding scope without stating it explicitly

Read the full file on GitHub · 528 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. 12d ago First seen · 528 lines · 3,911 tokens per session scan C 51ea123ec5ba

Subscribe to this mod's changes

claude-chief-of-staff CLAUDE.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository mimurchison/claude-chief-of-staff (432 stars, last pushed 7mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 3,911 tokens to every session, about $0.0196 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it C with 1 finding (hidden instructions). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

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