Dispatch
Guardrails vs guidelines: why I left CLAUDE.md
A rule written in a CLAUDE.md, the agent eventually forgets: a few tens of thousands of tokens later, it's no longer in its window. A guardrail — a hook that refuses the action — doesn't forget. I moved the rules that matter from markdown to about fifteen hooks. Here's what it changes, and what it really costs.
coding-agents guardrails hooks