A Bloated CLAUDE.md Is Why It Ignores Your Rules

Three hundred lines of instructions and it still breaks your conventions. So you add more rules. It gets worse.

Here's my read on why: bloated instruction files cause the model to ignore the instructions that matter. The important rules get lost in the noise.

For every line, ask one question: would deleting this cause a mistake? If not, cut it. Delete anything inferable from reading the code. Delete generic advice. Link to API docs instead of pasting them.

Shorter file, better adherence. It's counterintuitive until you watch the same task run against a bloated file and a pruned one.