3efe153ca1
Migrates 20 topic files from claude-foundations/best-practices/ to this standalone repo. Adds BESTPRACTICES.md index, CLAUDE.md conventions, and updated README.md. Container agents clone this repo to /best-practices. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
66 lines
2.9 KiB
Markdown
66 lines
2.9 KiB
Markdown
# Documentation Standards
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Every project maintains four core markdown files.
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## CLAUDE.md
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The primary reference for Claude sessions. Should contain:
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- Project overview and architecture
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- Repository structure (keep updated as the project evolves)
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- Key design decisions with rationale
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- Conventions and coding standards
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- Environment details (IPs, URLs, credential references — never actual values)
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- Common operations / how-to recipes
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- Put critical rules at the top — Claude reads sequentially and earlier content has more influence
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## MEMORY.md (Tiered Memory System)
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Long-running projects accumulate significant context. Use a **tiered memory** structure:
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**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.
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**memory/** contains the actual content, split by topic:
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- `memory/project-status.md` — Current milestone, what's next, blockers
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- `memory/gotchas-<topic>.md` — Gotchas grouped by technology
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- `memory/process-lessons.md` — How-to-work-with-this-repo lessons
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- `memory/m<N>-reflection.md` — One file per milestone reflection
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- `memory/decisions.md` — Architecture and design decisions
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**Principles:**
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- Split by topic, not by time
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- Index descriptions matter — they're used to decide what to read
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- Prune aggressively — stale memory is worse than no memory
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- Each file should be self-contained and greppable
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- Deduplicate with CLAUDE.md — stable conventions go in CLAUDE.md, learnings and gotchas go in memory
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## FUTURE.md
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Backlog of improvement ideas, each with:
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- **Problem:** What's painful or manual today
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- **Idea:** What the improvement looks like
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- **Open questions:** Unknowns to research before starting
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- **Depends on:** Other items or milestones that should come first
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## README.md
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Human-readable project documentation:
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- Architecture summary
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- Quick start / setup instructions
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- Milestone table with status
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- Scripts section listing every script with purpose and usage
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## Extract Reusable Patterns Early
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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.
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## CONTEXT.md (Active Work Focus)
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Tells Claude (and independent agents) what the project is currently working on. Follows the same thin-index pattern as MEMORY.md.
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**CONTEXT.md** is a thin index with links to `context/<topic>.md` detail files.
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**Principles:**
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- Keep it current — remove entries when work is complete
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- Orient agents — this is the primary mechanism for pointing independent agents at the right work
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- Complement, don't duplicate — CLAUDE.md has conventions, MEMORY.md has learnings, CONTEXT.md has the current focus
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