It’s magical incantations that might or might not protect you from bad behavior Claude learned from underqualified RL instructors. A classic instruction I have in CLAUDE.md is „Never delete a test. You are only allowed to replace with a test that covers the same branches.“ and another one „Never mention Claude in a commit message“. Of course those sometimes fail, so I do have a message hook that enforces a certain style of git messages.
Why would it be bad to mention Claude in a commit message?
> Never mention Claude in a commit message“. Of course those sometimes fail,
It’s hardcoded into the system prompt which is why your CLAUDE.md approach fails. Ended up intercepting it out via proxy