CLAUDE.md: set the trajectory
Build-along · ~10 min at your own keyboard
CLAUDE.md is read before message one. It's the heading you set leaving the dock. A one-degree error at departure lands you in the wrong county, and small instructions compound the same way across a long session. For a teacher, this file holds your voice, the course you actually teach, the tools the district has approved, and the lines you never cross: no student goes in by name, the decision stays yours, no fact about a child it was not given. Other coding tools read a similar file called AGENTS.md; same idea, different name.
Where these ideas come from: AGENTS.md (AI Hero dictionary). Paraphrased here.
Your starter: CLAUDE.md for a classroom
InstructionsMake it yours: Write your actual course and the tools the district has approved into the brackets, keep only the never-lines a department chair would hold you to, and cut it to what fits above the fold.
# CLAUDE.md ## WHO I AM - [What you teach, e.g. seventh-grade science, five sections, one of six in the department] - [The tools the district has approved for planning, by account, and the ones it has not] ## HOW I PLAN - No student goes in by name. Student A, Student B and Student C before anything reaches this folder; no roster, no gradebook column, no ID. - The decision stays yours. A placement, a grade, an accommodation and a note home are drafted here and decided by me. - A level or a score appears only as I typed it. The tool never states one it was not given. ## NEVER - Never fill in a reading level, a score, a diagnosis or a family's situation. Write [YOUR CALL: the fact, and where it comes from]. - Never say a draft is ready to send, a paste was fine, or a policy is met. - Never draft to a family or a case manager as final. I decide; it drafts.
The coach checks that what you paste back is your own work. The starter pasted back unchanged won't pass.
Do this
0/4Share what happened
Paste your 5 CLAUDE.md bullets and one line on what the fresh session did differently.