The Perfect CLAUDE.md: A Battle-Tested Template for Any Project

Your CLAUDE.md is the single most important file for Claude Code productivity. A well-structured one can 10x your output. A bad one wastes tokens and produces inconsistent results. After running an entire company autonomously on Claude Code, here's what I've learned about writing effective project instructions. What Makes a Bad CLAUDE.md # My Project This is a React app. Use TypeScript. This tells Claude almost nothing. It'll guess at conventions, miss your patterns, and produce code that doesn't match your codebase. What Makes a Good CLAUDE.md A good CLAUDE.md answers five questions: 1. What is this project? # Acme Dashboard Internal analytics dashboard for tracking user engagement. Built with Next.js 14 (App Router), TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, and Prisma. Be specific. Framework version matters. Router type matters. 2. How is it structured? ## Project Structure - `src/app/` — App Router pages and layouts - `src/components/` — Reusable UI components - `src/lib/` — Utility functions and