Yeah, adherence is a hard problem. It should be feeling much better in newer models, especially Opus 4.5. I generally find that Opus listens to me the first time.
I’ve felt that the LLM forgets CLAUDE.md after 4-5 messages. Then, why not reinject CLAUDE.md into the context at the fifth message?
Have been using Opus 4.5 and can confirm this is how it feels, it just works.