How Claude Code loads CLAUDE.md and Skills, and how to work with it
10/29/2026 — 10/29, 15:18·1 sources (all)·1 reports (all)
Key takeaways
- A tutorial breaks down how Claude Code assembles context: the root CLAUDE.md enters the context window in full at session start and is resen…
Background & analysis
On October 29, 2026, the AI section of DEV Community published an article explaining how Claude Code loads context, focusing on two mechanisms: the root-level CLAUDE.md file and Skills.
According to the article, the root CLAUDE.md is the exception among context sources. It enters the context when a session begins and is included in full with every request the model makes. Skills behave differently: at first, only a skill's name and description are loaded into context, and the full body of the skill is loaded only when the skill triggers.
The author describes this piece as part of a series. An earlier article in the series mapped out four context-engineering principles for 2026, and this article covers the first of them. The author says the piece draws on experience working across multiple services, arguing that extra context harms accuracy rather than merely consuming more tokens, and outlines what the author's team did about it in their own systems. The available material does not detail those practices.
AI-generated from 1 reports · updated 1 day ago
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The article explains how Claude Code loads context: the root CLAUDE.md enters the context at session start and is included in full in every request, while Skills initially load only their name and description, with the body loaded when triggered. The author draws on experience with multi-service projects to discuss how extra context hurts accuracy and what they did about it.
DEV Community · AIAI score 56
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