Moving step-by-step procedures from CLAUDE.md into Claude Code skills
Keep facts in CLAUDE.md, move procedures into on-demand SKILL.md files, run heavy chores in Haiku subagents, and let Jev route micro-forks in milliseconds.
THIS IS SO F*CKING UNDERRATED Anthropic put one of the best Claude Code tricks in its own docs, and almost nobody uses it. The idea: stop stuffing procedures into CLAUDE.md. Move every step-by-step job into a skill. CLAUDE.md loads into every single session. A skill's body only loads when it's actually used, so long checklists cost almost nothing until the moment you need them. You start with one folder: mkdir -p .claude/skills/release-check here's the split: → CLAUDE.md keeps facts only: stack, commands, rules → every procedure becomes .claude/skills/<name>/SKILL.md → only its one-line description sits in context until the job comes up → model: haiku and context: fork run the heavy ones in their own subagent The skill only shows up at three moments: → when your request matches its description → when you type /release-check yourself → when you touch files that match its paths CLAUDE.md remembers. Skills load. Haiku does the chores. JEV engineering is the same move one layer down: the forks that need no thinker (which skill, which file, retry or stop) go to JEV in milliseconds, and the big models only see the ones that split the full tree > CLAUDE.md holds facts only, short > .claude/skills/release-check/SKILL.md holds the procedure > description: one line that says when to use it > !`git diff HEAD` injects the live diff before Claude reads it > model: haiku + context: fork runs it outside the main session > Opus 5.5 reads only the result > JEV routes micro-forks in milliseconds paste the tree and this prompt into Claude Code ↓ "Audit my CLAUDE.md around this tree: 1. Split it into facts (keep) and procedures (move out). 2. Turn each procedure into .claude/skills/<name>/SKILL.md with a one-line description of when to use it. 3. For read-only chores, add model: haiku and context: fork. 4. Add paths: to skills that only matter for certain folders. Show me every change as a diff first. No edits until I say go." ↳ http://code.claude.com/docs/en/skills your CLAUDE.md should get shorter every week.
This post quotes another post: x.com/skunzu/status/2111186725548511689