claude_mac/CLAUDE.global.md

Global coding preferences

Apply unless repo-specific instructions override.

Code style

• Simple, readable, maintainable > clever or compact.
• One responsibility per function/method.
• Preserve existing behavior unless asked.
• Scope changes to task — no unrelated edits.

Limits (adapt to language)

• Max 25 logic lines/function (executable statements; comments and error-handling boilerplate don't count), 80 chars/line, 5 params, 5 locals.
• Too many params → struct/object. Too many vars → split/extract.
• No global state. Explicit data flow.

Comments & readability

• Document intent, not mechanics. Use project doc style (docstring, JSDoc…).
• Explicit, consistent names. Straight control flow, no hidden side effects.
• Written deliverables (docs, reports, .md): length matched to the task, no filler sections, no boilerplate summaries.

Refactoring

• Priority: safety → readability → consistency.
• Remove dead code, stale comments, obsolete flags after changes.
• Non-trivial change: ask "more elegant solution exists?" Hacky fix → rebuild clean, no over-engineering.

Session start

1. Read .claude/memory/ (5 registries: decisions, learnings, blockers, journal, evals) and .claude/tasks/TODO.md. Apply before touching anything.
2. Either missing → create it first (templates: ~/.claude/templates/memory/).

Workflow

• Confirm before implementing only when real trade-offs exist (several valid approaches, breaking change, destructive action); else proceed. Minimal changes unless a broader refactor is requested. State trade-offs.
• Sub-agents: one task each, main context stays clean. Delegate independent, sizeable tracks (wide multi-file exploration, parallel audits), not work doable in a few tool calls. Skill-mandated gates (fresh verifier/security/challenge) always dispatch as written; a failed gate re-dispatches a fresh executor, never redo its work by hand. A brief never authorizes a sub-agent to run a destructive tool, inside or outside the repo (Security → Destructive tools & data loss).
• Ask rather than guess. A choice visible in the result (placement, wording, order, behavior), a name that becomes public (command, flag, endpoint, file), or a scope the request leaves open → ask, even mid-task; batch what can be batched. Internal choices with no observable effect stay yours. Exception: skill-mandated gates and checkpoints (validation, approval, darwin) always fire.
• Bug received → fix directly: logs, root cause, resolve autonomously; a visible choice in the fix still gets asked.
• Deviations: minor or clearly justified → do, explain after; significant or shaky → ask first. Finish the whole task: a blocked independent sub-part → do the rest, state what's missing. Something goes WRONG → STOP, re-plan, never push through.
• Root causes only, no temp fixes. Never assume: verify paths, APIs, variables before use.

Planning & TODO (.claude/tasks/TODO.md)

• Task touches logic (new behavior, control flow, state, API, dependencies) → write the plan in TODO.md first, decomposed into subtasks; one complex task still needs one. Borderline (single file, small obvious change) → skip, stay pragmatic.
• Exempt: pure reads, explanations, questions, typos, cosmetic CSS, single config value — the /hotfix scope (≤2 files, obvious fix).
• Once it qualifies: plan before code → one subtask = one coherent change → check off as you go → high-level note at each milestone.

After code changes

1. Run tests, lint, build, type-check if available. Report what was verified and what was not; list remaining risks and surviving deviations.
2. Don't mark complete without proof it works.
3. Correction or notable event → capitalize to the right registry.

Memory registries (.claude/memory/)

Five registries persist across sessions; capitalize during and after work. Append-only: never rewrite past entries; curation (merge, supersede, compress) only via /prune-memory.

File	ID	Purpose
decisions.md	BDR-XXX	Design/architecture choice + rationale + alternatives + status
learnings.md	LRN-XXX	Reusable pattern + context + future application
blockers.md	BLK-XXX	Friction + real cause + solution + status (open/resolved/upstream)
journal.md	date heading	3-5 lines/session — done, decided, blocked
evals.md	EVAL-XXX	Quality check of Claude's output + method + anomalies + action

Routing: a choice with trade-offs you'd defend → decisions; a pattern worth reusing → learnings; a dead end with its root cause → blockers; the session log → journal; whether the output actually worked → evals.

Always English, always caveman: drop articles and filler, fragments OK, short synonyms; technical terms, code blocks, quoted errors, IDs and dates exact. Pattern [thing] [action] [reason]. [next step]. Registries load every session; caveman cuts ~40% of the tokens with no substance lost. Applies to direct writes and to the CAPITALIZE step of every completion skill. Prompts to the user may mirror their language; the entry is English. Legacy entries: compress on demand.

Proactive capitalization is Claude's job: after a substantive milestone (root-caused bug fix, shipped feature, non-trivial commit, design choice, surprising discovery, dead end with a lesson) offer to capitalize inline, entry pre-filled, user approves before the write. Completion skills (/ship-feature /feat /bugfix /hotfix /commit-change) do it via their CAPITALIZE step. Session close (/close = /capitalize --ritual): what was decided → decisions, learned → learnings, blocked → blockers.

Architecture decisions

Override default framework/tooling choices at project creation, scaffolding, brainstorming.

Public websites — never SPA

A public site meant to be indexed (landing, portfolio, blog, e-commerce, docs) is never a pure SPA (CRA, Vite React, Vue SPA): the empty HTML shell hides content from search and AI engines, SEO and GEO destroyed.

• Astro by default for informational sites: static HTML at build, zero JS by default, React/Vue/Svelte islands for interactive parts.
• Next.js when dynamic SSR is needed (personalized content, server-side auth, API routes, hybrid app).
• React SPA only for what needs no indexing: admin panels, dashboards, auth-gated apps, internal tools. Mixed project: Astro/Next for public, React island (client:only) for admin.
• At brainstorming (/init-project, /ship-feature STEP 1), public site and no framework named → propose Astro, explain why not SPA. Never silently pick React CRA.

Web APIs — always versioned

Every endpoint versioned from day one: /api/v1/..., no bare /api/; the router mirrors it (api/v1/routes/). Breaking change → v2, the old version keeps working and clients migrate at their pace; non-breaking additions → current version. Each version is a self-contained contract, never bent to match a newer one.

Version control — gitflow (universal)

Every git action follows gitflow, inside a skill or for an ad-hoc commit. main (prod) · develop (integration, off main) · feature/* bugfix/* chore/* (off develop → develop; chore = memory/doc maintenance such as a standalone /capitalize /close /prune-memory /reconcile) · release/* (off develop → main + back-merge develop) · hotfix/* (off main → main + develop + any open release). master → main everywhere.

Never commit code on main or develop: branch first as <type>/<name> (.claude/** memory/config commits are hook-exempt, following the work). Branch, merge and delete only via the lib: bash ~/.claude/lib/gitflow.sh start <type> <name> · finish · delete <br>. finish runs only on an explicit human signal ("merge it", "feature OK"), never because tests pass, a plan step says merge, or "ship" implied it. Assistance flows (/feat /bugfix /hotfix) and the standalone memory/doc skills auto-branch on a protected base but commit in place on a working branch, never finishing, so they branch to chore/* via the aiguillage, not the .claude/** exemption. Deterministic backstops behind the doctrine: the pre-commit hook (blocks code commits on main/develop; exempts .claude/**, .githooks/**, merges, the root commit), Gitea branch protection on both, and never --no-verify. Every branch is pushed at start, every commit and merge as it lands (post-commit and post-merge hooks; warn, never block). A branch is deleted only by finish or delete, local and origin/ copy alike: never main/develop, never a tip not merged into develop or main (explicit ancestor check; git branch -d proves nothing once the branch has an auto-pushed upstream). The reference-transaction hook vetoes any deletion or rename of main/develop. The four hooks run in every repo: make link generates githooks/ and sets the global core.hooksPath; a repo that ran gitflow init (new/onboarded projects) keeps its own .githooks/, refreshed at session start. Foreign clone: git config gitflow.protect false / gitflow.autopush false; GITFLOW_NO_PUSH=1 only for throwaway test repos. A branch ahead of its upstream is a defect, not a state.

Security — non-negotiable defaults

Apply at every step: design, scaffolding, implementation, review.

• Input & data: never trust user input; validate type, length, format, range. Sanitize before rendering (XSS), SQL (injection), shell (command injection). Parameterized queries only; string concatenation into SQL is an immediate blocker.
• Secrets: never hardcoded (credentials, tokens, keys, URLs with auth), not even in comments; env vars only, .env.example with placeholders. A secret found in review → flag and stop.
• AuthN / AuthZ: separate; AuthN never implies AuthZ. Check authorization on every sensitive endpoint or function, not only at the entry point. Default deny; explicit allowlist over implicit denylist.
• Dependencies: none without stating what it does and why; prefer well-maintained, widely used packages, flag abandoned or single-maintainer ones; never install a package from a random snippet without naming it.
• Errors & logging: no stack traces, internal paths or DB errors to end users (log internally, generic message out); never log secrets, tokens or PII, even at DEBUG; fail closed, deny on unexpected error.
• Minimal privilege: request only what is needed; temporary elevation scoped and reverted explicitly.

Destructive tools & data loss

Written after 2026-09-21: a reviewer sub-agent traced lftp mirror --delete against a local file:// tree, the target resolved to a real path, and 90 seconds later the home, the NAS mount and 15 repositories were gone, four days of work never pushed.

• Claude never deploys and never runs a transfer or mirror tool (lftp, sftp, ftp, rsync --delete): it writes or explains the runbook, the user runs it. A test is a dev server on this machine, nothing more.
• A destructive tool is never run "to see what it would do", not even on a scratch tree: trace it by reading. If a run is unavoidable, the target is a fresh mktemp -d path written literally in the same command, after a dry-run whose output is shown.
• Recursive delete stays inside the project or the temp dir, on a literal relative path: never through a variable, ~, .., a wildcard or an absolute path elsewhere. chmod -R, chown -R, sudo, docker volume drops, system bind mounts: the user runs them by hand.
• A brief, plan step or test recipe never authorizes a sub-agent to do any of this; a reviewer reads the script it reviews, it does not run it.
• Everything is pushed as it lands (gitflow hooks): unpushed work is a defect to fix now, not a state to keep.

Communication mode: radical honesty

• TRUTH OVER COMFORT: point out flaws immediately, no sugarcoating, no "not bad but…". ZERO COMPLACENCY: never validate an idea because I proposed it; judge arguments on merit.
• BLIND SPOT DETECTION: look for what I'm missing (confirmation bias, hidden assumptions, ignored alternatives) and flag it without waiting.
• ACTIVE RESISTANCE: when I make a weak point, push back until I correct it or solidly justify it. UNCERTAINTY TRANSPARENCY: don't know → say so; no invention, no vague answers to save face.

Tooling & skills

Skill routing

Skills route by name: match the request to the skill whose description fits. Below, only the non-obvious cases: gstack fallbacks, disambiguation, cryptic names.

• Product idea, "worth building?" → office-hours
• Bug / error / 500 → bugfix (gitflow, contract, fresh verifier/security gates, registries). investigate only on explicit ask for the gstack ecosystem (cross-project learnings, /freeze, long open-ended investigation)
• feat / hotfix / bugfix distinguished by file count → see descriptions
• Ship / deploy / PR → ship (ship-feature if gstack off)
• Docs post-ship → document-release (doc if gstack off); stale-doc audit → doc
• Grouped all-axes sweep ("tir groupé", fix + loop until clean) → tour
• Open-work inventory / "queue empty?" / stale TODO vs git → reconcile
• Design / UI (build, system, audit, polish) → "Design work" below
• Architecture review → plan-eng-review
• Before /clear or /compact → capitalize; end-of-session ritual → close
• SEO+GEO → seo (GEO only → geo); W3C + WCAG a11y → web-validate; security audit (secrets, CVE, OWASP) → cso gstack OFF → its skills (investigate, ship, qa, review, health, retro, office-hours, context-save…) are gone: use the fallback above, else say so.

Design work — full toolchain (tiered by scope)

Trigger = UI work: editing a component/style file (.tsx/.vue/.svelte/.css…) or a design/UI request, not the word "design" alone. Single source for design routing; the design-toolchain hook reinforces it.

• Trivial (≤2 files, one cosmetic value) → /hotfix, no toolchain.
• Build UI (component, page, redesign) → ui-ux-pro-max + frontend-design (anti-slop) + 21st-ui-build (catalog + generation) + emil-design-eng (polish) + design-motion-principles (motion) + design-html (static). Post-build floor when impeccable is installed: npx impeccable detect <files> (45 deterministic anti-slop rules, exit 2 = findings).
• Design system / brand → design-consultation first, then the build tools.
• Review / audit → design-review + emil-design-eng + design-motion-principles
  • 21st-ui-review + /impeccable audit|critique + impeccable detect floor. Scope doubt → ask or default to Build, never silently skip. Gate: light skills run ~/.claude/lib/design-gate.md, orchestrators plugin-check. 21st = CLI (npm i -g @21st-dev/cli, 21st login), no MCP, no key; search free, 21st get/generate metered → generation, not micro-tweaks.

graphify

ALL rules apply only if graphify-out/graph.json exists — else read files directly.

• Codebase-wide question → graphify query; relationships → path A B; concept → explain. Scoped subgraph beats raw grep.
• Known file / small task → read directly, no graphify.
• wiki/index.md → broad-nav entry; GRAPH_REPORT.md → whole-architecture.
• After editing code → graphify update . (AST-only, free).