What's actually in my CLAUDE.md (and what I deleted).
The soul file is the highest-leverage document in the whole stack. Most of its value is deletions.
Every agent I run reads the same CLAUDE.md before it does anything. It's the highest-leverage document in the stack: a few hundred lines shaping thousands of agent-hours. And most of its value came from deletions.
What the file is for
The soul file answers three questions the agent would otherwise guess at: how do we make decisions here, what are the standing rules, and what does good look like. Everything else is decoration.
Ours carries the operating spine: sprint contracts before code, cost ceilings with the Sunday-night ritual, postmortem discipline, the amendment protocol for mid-sprint changes. Each one points to a fuller lesson rather than being the lesson. The file is an index of hard-won rules, not a textbook.
The deletion discipline
The failure mode is the file that grows forever. Every incident tempts you to add a rule — never do X again — until the file is a museum of past mistakes no agent can hold in working memory.
The test a rule has to pass: it must change agent behavior in a situation the agent would otherwise get wrong. "Be careful" fails. "Run the pre-flight gates before every ship" passes. When in doubt I delete, and if the same mistake happens twice, the rule comes back shorter.
What this doesn't cover
The soul file doesn't replace the lessons. It's the map, not the territory. An agent that has read the file knows the rules exist; the lessons teach the judgment behind them. The starter template is in the lab's CLAUDE.md lesson. Take it, delete half of it, and make the rest yours.