PRODUCTION SCENARIO
Your CLAUDE.md has reached 650 lines, having collected every deployment caveat and review rule the team has written down. Engineers report that Claude ignores rules that are plainly stated in the file. A teammate proposes keeping the same content but splitting it into six files pulled in with @path imports.
Which restructuring restores adherence?
Answering here is anonymous. Nothing is saved unless you sign in.
Show answer and explanation
Answer: Trim CLAUDE.md toward 200 lines and move situational rules into .claude/rules with paths frontmatter
Adherence falls off as a CLAUDE.md grows, which is why the target is under 200 lines, and path-scoped rules keep situational instructions out of context until Claude works on a matching file. Imports tidy the repository but change nothing about context, because imported files still load at launch.
Official Source: https://code.claude.com/docs/en/memory ↗