claude-code-system-prompts: Instructions file for Claude Code

CLAUDE.md

claude-code-system-prompts CLAUDE.md is an instructions file for Claude Code from Piebald-AI/claude-code-system-prompts. It costs 362 tokens per session, scanned A, original, MIT.

Reference instructions describing Claude Code, Anthropic’s command-line tool for working with code, and a repository of its extracted system prompts.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to understand the repository, inspect prompt versions, customize local prompt pieces with tweakcc, or file feature requests.
Why use it?
It clarifies what these prompt files contain and prevents treating them as editable Claude Code source code.

Instructions file for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: the file is CLAUDE.md. Also seen: mentions Claude Code.

This is Piebald-AI/claude-code-system-prompts's own configuration. It tells Claude Code how to work on claude-code-system-prompts 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-code-system-prompts configures →

About the project

claude-code-system-prompts is a repository that records the system prompts, tool descriptions, agent prompts, and utility prompts used by Claude Code. It serves people who want to inspect how Claude Code structures its built-in agents and tools across releases. The catalogue instruction provides access to material documenting that workflow.

Piebald-AI/claude-code-system-prompts · 12,609 stars · on GitHub

Reuse

Borrowing it

Nothing to install: this file belongs to Piebald-AI/claude-code-system-prompts. 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/Piebald-AI/claude-code-system-prompts/main/CLAUDE.md
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Piebald-AI/claude-code-system-prompts

Made for: Claude Code.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

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README.md
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Your own site
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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.

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<a href="https://agentmods.dev/instructions/piebald-ai/claude-code-system-prompts/claude-md"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/piebald-ai/claude-code-system-prompts/claude-md.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 362 This file is loaded in full into every session.
When invoked 362 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.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00362 $0.00362
Opus 5 $0.00181 $0.00181
Sonnet 5 $0.00072 $0.00072
Haiku 4.5 $0.00036 $0.00036

Measured 9d ago against content hash 6fb0cae37ab2, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-08, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

claude-code-system-prompts 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 9d 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 · 26 lines

What it actually says

Claude Code System Prompts

What this repository is

System prompts extracted via script from the Claude Code npm package's compiled JavaScript source. Maintained by Piebald AI, not by Anthropic.

See the Extraction section in README.md for details on the extraction method.

What Claude Code is

Claude Code is Anthropic's CLI tool for agentic coding. It is distributed as a compiled npm package (@anthropic-ai/claude-code). Source code is not publicly available. The anthropics/claude-code GitHub repository contains issues and releases only.

How to use these files

  • Reference: Understand what prompts Claude Code uses and how they change across versions
  • Local patching: Use tweakcc to customize individual prompt pieces in your local Claude Code installation
  • Feature requests: For changes to Claude Code's prompts, file issues at anthropics/claude-code/issues

For AI agents working with this repository

  • These files are extracted reference material, not modifiable source code
  • Editing files here does not change Claude Code's behavior
  • The system-prompts/ directory contains markdown files with YAML frontmatter noting the Claude Code version and template variables
  • Template variables like ${BASH_TOOL_NAME} are interpolated at runtime by Claude Code — they appear as literal strings in these files
  • The CHANGELOG.md tracks prompt changes across Claude Code versions
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. 9d ago First seen · 26 lines · 362 tokens per session scan A 6fb0cae37ab2

Subscribe to this mod's changes

claude-code-system-prompts CLAUDE.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository Piebald-AI/claude-code-system-prompts (12,609 stars, last pushed 2d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 362 tokens to every session, about $0.0018 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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