claude-md

claude-md is a skill for Claude Code from luongnv89/claude-howto. It costs 20 tokens per session (1,677 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guide for creating, updating, or checking CLAUDE.md files, which give an AI coding agent instructions about a codebase.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to create project or folder-specific instructions, improve an existing file, or assess its quality.
Why use it?
It helps keep the agent’s essential project guidance focused, relevant, and easy to follow.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: $ARGUMENTS substitution. Also seen: reads .claude/ paths; mentions CLAUDE.md; mentions subagents.

Good fit Use it to create project or folder-specific instructions, improve an existing file, or assess its quality.

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/luongnv89/claude-howto/claude-md
About the project

luongnv89/claude-howto is a visual, example-based guide to Claude Code, a coding tool that supports agents, hooks, skills, slash commands, and MCP servers. Developers use it to learn Claude Code through practical workflows and copyable templates, including the commands, agents, skills, plugins, and instructions catalogued here.

luongnv89/claude-howto · 41,422 stars · on GitHub · luongnv.com

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.

Any agent
npx skills add luongnv89/claude-howto --skill claude-md
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/luongnv89/claude-howto

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.

agentmods badge for claude-md

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/luongnv89/claude-howto/claude-md/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/luongnv89/claude-howto/claude-md)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/luongnv89/claude-howto/claude-md"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/luongnv89/claude-howto/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.

agentmods 80×15 button for claude-md

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/luongnv89/claude-howto/claude-md"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/luongnv89/claude-howto/claude-md.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 20 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,677 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe. Third-party audits
  • Snyk pass 7 Sept 2026
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector warn 7 Sept 2026
SkillSpector: 1 finding, up to medium

These are SkillSpector’s own severities. On a checked sample its high-severity flags on skills were ~96% false positives — a documented command, a public API, a “never do X” rule — so we show them as a caution to read, not a verdict. Why →

  • medium Rogue Agent · line 3
    Skill establishes unauthorized persistence across sessions via cron jobs, startup scripts, or state files. Session persistence allows an attacker to maintain access beyond the current interaction.
    Fix: Remove any persistence mechanisms (cron jobs, startup scripts, state files). Skills should not maintain state across sessions without explicit user consent.
How audits are shown
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 $0.00020 $0.01677
Opus 5 $0.00010 $0.00839
Sonnet 5 $0.00004 $0.00335
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00168

Measured 11d ago against content hash ad38cf4093d8, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-10, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

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 11d 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.

03-skills/claude-md/SKILL.md · 225 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 225 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

User Input

$ARGUMENTS

You MUST consider the user input before proceeding (if not empty). User may specify:

  • create - Create new CLAUDE.md from scratch
  • update - Improve existing CLAUDE.md
  • audit - Analyze and report on current CLAUDE.md quality
  • A specific path to create/update (e.g., src/api/CLAUDE.md for directory-specific instructions)

Core Principles

LLMs are stateless: CLAUDE.md is the only file automatically included in every conversation. It serves as the primary onboarding document for AI agents into your codebase.

The Golden Rules

  1. Less is More: Frontier LLMs can follow ~150-200 instructions. Claude Code's system prompt already uses ~50. Keep your CLAUDE.md focused and concise.

  2. Universal Applicability: Only include information relevant to EVERY session. Task-specific instructions belong in separate files.

  3. Don't Use Claude as a Linter: Style guidelines bloat context and degrade instruction-following. Use deterministic tools (prettier, eslint, etc.) instead.

  4. Never Auto-Generate: CLAUDE.md is the highest leverage point of the AI harness. Craft it manually with careful consideration.

Execution Flow

1. Project Analysis

First, analyze the current project state:

  1. Check for existing CLAUDE.md files:

    • Root level: ./CLAUDE.md or .claude/CLAUDE.md
    • Directory-specific: **/CLAUDE.md
    • Global user config: ~/.claude/CLAUDE.md
  2. Identify the project structure:

    • Technology stack (languages, frameworks)
    • Project type (monorepo, single app, library)
    • Development tools (package manager, build system, test runner)
  3. Review existing documentation:

    • README.md
    • CONTRIBUTING.md
    • package.json, pyproject.toml, Cargo.toml, etc.

2. Content Strategy (WHAT, WHY, HOW)

Structure CLAUDE.md around three dimensions:

WHAT - Technology & Structure
  • Technology stack overview
  • Project organization (especially important for monorepos)
  • Key directories and their purposes

Read the full file on GitHub · 225 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. 11d ago First seen · 225 lines · 20 tokens per session scan A ad38cf4093d8

Subscribe to this mod's changes

claude-md is a skill published in the GitHub repository luongnv89/claude-howto (41,422 stars, last pushed 4d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 20 tokens to every session and 1,677 once invoked, about $0.0001 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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