Anthropic · CCAR-F
The CLAUDE.md hierarchy and rules
CCAR-F · Lesson 9 of 18 · 1:10:39
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In this lesson
Prepare for the Claude Certified Architect – Foundations exam, on the exam guide version 1.0, effective July 2026. In this lesson: user-level, project-level, and directory-level CLAUDE.md files, how they combine, @imports, the .claude/rules folder, path-specific rules with glob patterns, and the /memory command. Includes three original practice questions.
Preview the topics
- A new team member joins Kestrel, and Claude Code ignores the team’s testing standards for this person only. A senior developer wrote them in ~/.claude/CLAUDE.md, in that developer’s home directory. What is the problem?
- Kestrel’s test files sit next to the code they test, in dozens of folders, and all tests must follow the same conventions. What is the most maintainable setup?
- Kestrel’s CLAUDE.md has grown to two thousand lines, covering testing, APIs, deployment, and style. What is the best way to organize it?