Add CLAUDE.md

[He-Pin]

Like databricks/sjsonnet#631
Which will help ai to understand this project

[raboof]

shouldn't claude be able to figure that out based on our regular CONTRIBUTING.md?

[pjfanning]

I've been playing with Claude and it works out our repos fine. Our files are laid out pretty logically. Let's not add the extra overhead of maintaining the Claude.md. It looks pretty similar to our Contributing.md anyway.

My testing has been with Copilot and Claude combined but I doubt that Claude alone can't work things out for itself.

[mkurz]

If you want to work with claude I highly recommend to add a CLAUDE.md and maybe even rules (i mean the claude rules) which explain the structure of the project, how to test, what to avoid, coding rules, etc. Maybe even hooks and skills. However keep it as short as possible, with clear statements.

I've been playing with Claude and it works out our repos fine. Our files are laid out pretty logically. Let's not add the extra overhead of maintaining the Claude.md. It looks pretty similar to our Contributing.md anyway.

The problem with that is if you do not define CLAUDE.md and let claude figure everything out itself you waste a lot of tokens in your context window for every session just for doing that. Its much better to provide claude as much information beforehand. This will give you much better results as well and avoid to run out of token before claude needs to compact the context and maybe loose information and claude takes the wrong turn and actually does not do what you wanted it to.

[mkurz]

For the beginning you could also just reference the CONTRIBUTING.md via @CONTRIBUTING.md

[mkurz]

The thing is CLAUDE.md will be loaded and send along with the system prompt, tools, user message, etc. on every request to the llm. If you rely on that claude will just find the CONTRIBUTING.md itself, sure it will at some point, however when you start a session it will not have read the file yet, but you already ask it to do something. It's also possible to that it does not read the contributing guide at all.