Compress Your Claude.md: Cut 60-70% of System Prompt Bloat in Claude Code
9 hours ago
- #Context management
- #AI workflow
- #Claude optimization
- Matt Pocock's video 'Never Run claude /init' discusses managing CLAUDE.md files to prevent context rot by avoiding verbose boilerplate.
- The core issue is that CLAUDE.md files consume context window space, affecting Claude's performance due to unnecessary noise.
- Hypothesis: Most CLAUDE.md formatting is for human readability, not machine use, suggesting stripping decoration for efficiency.
- Compression techniques include removing markdown decoration, collapsing prose to compact notation, and deduplicating information.
- Example: Directory index table reduced from a markdown table to a single line of pipe-delimited key-value pairs.
- Memory system instructions were similarly compressed, maintaining functionality with fewer characters.
- Results showed 60-70% reduction in file sizes, freeing up significant context window space.
- Tradeoff: Compressed files are less human-readable but optimized for Claude's use, which is the primary reader in many workflows.
- Recommendations for applying compression include auditing files, identifying and removing decoration, collapsing prose, and testing changes.
- Bigger picture: Optimizing CLAUDE.md files improves Claude's performance and coherence in extended sessions, aligning with good engineering practices.