# Documentation Standards

Every project maintains four core markdown files.

## CLAUDE.md

The primary reference for Claude sessions. Should contain:
- Project overview and architecture
- Repository structure (keep updated as the project evolves)
- Key design decisions with rationale
- Conventions and coding standards
- Environment details (IPs, URLs, credential references — never actual values)
- Common operations / how-to recipes
- Put critical rules at the top — Claude reads sequentially and earlier content has more influence

## MEMORY.md (Tiered Memory System)

Long-running projects accumulate significant context. Use a **tiered memory** structure:

**MEMORY.md** is a **thin index only** — one-line descriptions with links to topic files in `memory/`. No content lives in MEMORY.md itself. Keep it under ~50 lines.

**memory/** contains the actual content, split by topic:
- `memory/project-status.md` — Current milestone, what's next, blockers
- `memory/gotchas-<topic>.md` — Gotchas grouped by technology
- `memory/process-lessons.md` — How-to-work-with-this-repo lessons
- `memory/m<N>-reflection.md` — One file per milestone reflection
- `memory/decisions.md` — Architecture and design decisions

**Principles:**
- Split by topic, not by time
- Index descriptions matter — they're used to decide what to read
- Prune aggressively — stale memory is worse than no memory
- Each file should be self-contained and greppable
- Deduplicate with CLAUDE.md — stable conventions go in CLAUDE.md, learnings and gotchas go in memory

## FUTURE.md

Backlog of improvement ideas, each with:
- **Problem:** What's painful or manual today
- **Idea:** What the improvement looks like
- **Open questions:** Unknowns to research before starting
- **Depends on:** Other items or milestones that should come first

## README.md

Human-readable project documentation:
- Architecture summary
- Quick start / setup instructions
- Milestone table with status
- Scripts section listing every script with purpose and usage

## Extract Reusable Patterns Early

When a reusable pattern emerges during project work (a gotcha that applies to any project using the same tool, a process lesson that generalises), extract it into a best-practices guide immediately rather than waiting for a dedicated distillation pass. The guide pays for itself when used to audit and improve the current project in the same session, and benefits all future projects.

## CONTEXT.md (Active Work Focus)

Tells Claude (and independent agents) what the project is currently working on. Follows the same thin-index pattern as MEMORY.md.

**CONTEXT.md** is a thin index with links to `context/<topic>.md` detail files.

**Principles:**
- Keep it current — remove entries when work is complete
- Orient agents — this is the primary mechanism for pointing independent agents at the right work
- Complement, don't duplicate — CLAUDE.md has conventions, MEMORY.md has learnings, CONTEXT.md has the current focus