But you can tell it to once (in CLAUDE.md for example) and it will nearly every time (it's getting much better at that). Since opus 4.7 (which I consider a downgrade overall) it's been much better at following CLAUDE.md . I even have an intentional contradiction in my user-level CLAUDE.md and the project levels, so I can tell which one is taking precedent or if both are disregarded, and it follows at least one of them most of the time, and it follows the local one 95% of the time.