Slopless

Quick Start •
  The Method •
  The Config •
  The Hooks •
  The Mods •
  Anti-Slop •
  Read First

An instrument that cannot fail certifies whatever you point it at.

Every guard in this repo ships with tests in both directions, and the repo itself is built by a script that fails the build rather than publish something it cannot check. Try the guards in ten seconds, inside Claude Code:

Claude Code configuration from daily use on real work. Not a tutorial. Not a summary. These are the actual files, generated from a live setup and sanitized for sharing.

Two layers, useful at different depths.

The method. 80 numbered principles for working with an agent that can be wrong confidently. Cite them in a review or a design doc without adopting any of the tooling. Every one was bought by a specific failure.

The config. The files you copy into ~/.claude/. Rules, hooks, mods, settings, statusline.

Read this before you copy anything

The most useful thing in this repo may be the reason to copy less of it than you expect.

In July 2026 Anthropic removed over 80% of Claude Code's own system prompt for Opus 5 and Fable 5, with no measurable loss on their coding evals. Their finding was that they had been overconstraining the model, and that on this generation the constraints cost more than they bought. Their guidance now: let the model use judgement, design interfaces instead of writing examples, and load context progressively rather than stuffing it all into one file.

There is a matching result in the other direction. In April 2026 Anthropic added one line to that same system prompt, a length limit (*"keep final responses to ≤100 words unless the task requires more detail"*). Together with other prompt changes it hurt coding quality, one evaluation…