Big thanks to JJ Englert for the CLAUDE.md rewrite he posted. It was very helpful, and it is what got me here. I am not a developer by training, so I want Claude Code to explain its work in plain English, not developer-speak.

It worked initially. Then, partway into a long session, everything drifted back into technical jargon.

The reason: CLAUDE.md loads once, at the start. Hours later it may as well not be there.

The fix: a hook that re-sends the response style checklist every turn.

Two things this proves:

Repetition beats placement. An instruction that fires every turn survives.

Demand a format, not a mood. The checklist works because it is concrete enough to check.

How to write your own version

The mechanism is the easy part. Getting the wording right is what decides whether it holds. My checklist is tuned to what I want, which is plain English for someone without a technical background. Yours should be tuned to yours. What follows is how to get there, whatever your preference is.

Start from the drift you actually see. Not the style you wish for in the abstract. Write down the specific thing that keeps coming back wrong in your answers. That is what the reminder exists to correct.

Turn the preference into a shape you can check. This is the part that makes or breaks it. “Be concise” is a mood and it will drift. “No more than five bullets” is a shape. “Explain your reasoning” is a mood. “One line saying why, before each change” is a shape. If you cannot tell at a glance whether the rule was followed, neither can the model.

Name the failure mode inside the reminder. Mine says that the usual failure is a plain headline followed by jargon bullets, and to re-read the bullets before sending. Pointing at the specific way the rule gets broken works better than restating the rule louder.

Say where the unwanted thing is allowed, instead of banning it. Mine allows real file and tool names, in parentheses, after the plain-English version. A flat ban on technical terms produces vague answers. Giving the term a place to live keeps the detail without losing the plain reading.

Keep it short. It arrives on every single turn. Anything you pad it with, you pay for constantly.

Sort your instructions by whether they need repeating. Style and format need it, because they compete with everything the session produces after them. Facts about your project do not; they can sit in the file that loads once and be fine.

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Original posts: on X and on LinkedIn.