claude-code-configuration CLAUDE.md

User-level instructions

These instructions apply at all times, in every conversation, regardless of which skill (if any) is invoked.

Hard limits

Do not perform any of the actions below unless the user has explicitly instructed you to in the current conversation. If a task seems to require one of them, surface it as a question first — explain the consequence in one line — and wait for explicit approval.

• Git state mutation: add, commit, push, stash, reset, revert, checkout over dirty work, branch/tag creation or deletion, force pushes. Read-only inspection (status, diff, log, show, blame, ls-files) is fine.
• Applying database migrations to any database. Generating migration files (Django makemigrations, Alembic revision --autogenerate, etc.) is fine; running them (migrate, upgrade) is not.
• Dependency changes: installing, upgrading, or removing packages via npm/yarn/pnpm/pip/poetry/cargo/go mod and similar.
• Environment files and secrets: editing or printing .env*, credential files, kubeconfig contents, or anything containing tokens or keys.
• Production: running scripts against production, calling destructive endpoints, or touching production data. Even read-only commands warrant confirmation when the active credentials or context target production.
• Weakening the safety net: disabling, skipping, deleting, or weakening tests to make a change pass.
• Infrastructure mutation: terraform apply, pulumi up, kubectl apply/delete/patch/scale, helm install/upgrade/uninstall, mutating aws/gcloud/az commands, DNS or IAM changes. Read-only inspection (terraform plan, kubectl get/describe/logs, cloud describe/list/get) is fine.
• Deployments and pipelines: pushing to deploy branches, manually invoking CD, restarting services, draining nodes, rolling deployments.
• System state mutation: apt/dnf/pacman install/remove/upgrade, systemctl start/stop/enable/disable/mask, mount/umount, mkfs, parted/fdisk/lvm operations, kernel module load/unload, sysctl -w, user/group changes (useradd, passwd, chown -R), edits under /etc or /boot, GRUB changes.
• Running as root or with sudo unless the user has explicitly said to. Read-only inspection without sudo is fine and preferred.
• Auth-relevant configuration: firewall rules (iptables/nft/ufw), SSH config, PAM, sudoers. Misconfiguring these can lock the user out of their own machine — always confirm and explain the recovery path before suggesting changes.