Claude Code is the best AI coding tool on the planet โ until your project gets big and it starts forgetting half your codebase and editing the wrong file.
Anthropic just published the playbook to fix it. The frame: it's not the model, it's the harness around it. The model is fine. The harness is what most people are missing.
The 7 pieces:
- CLAUDE.md (layered + lean) โ ~15 lines at root + one per folder. Most people make it 500 lines and bury the signal
- Hooks โ a stop hook that proposes CLAUDE.md updates while context is fresh. Self-improving setup
- Skills (path-scoped) โ workflows that only load in the right folder
- Plugins โ bundle your whole setup so a new engineer installs it in one click
- LSP โ IDE-grade navigation. Only matters for big/multi-language repos
- MCP โ connect Claude to Jira, GitHub, Slack, your DB. Use existing servers first
- Sub-agents โ spin up 3 read-only ones at the start to map the codebase. Biggest single win
My order: layered CLAUDE.md โ sub-agents โ hooks โ skills โ plugins โ MCP/LSP last. ๐ Full 7-piece harness guide PDF pinned below โ every piece, the examples, and the exact setup sequence.
Comment which piece you're wiring up first ๐
[Watch the video here โถ๏ธ]