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What Loads When You Start Claude Code From a Subdirectory
In a monorepo, you launch claude from inside packages/api/
instead of the repo root.
Compared to launching from the root, what's different about what loads?
Solution
The correct answer is "Scoped to that subtree; loads its + ancestors' CLAUDE.md."
From a subdirectory, Claude is scoped to that subtree until you grant more access, and it loads that directory's CLAUDE.md plus every ancestor's — not the whole repository's set of CLAUDE.md files. From the root, only the root file loads at launch, with subdirectory files loading on demand as Claude reads there — so "the whole repo's CLAUDE.md always loads" and "the subdirectory one is ignored" are both wrong, and Claude can still gain access to other directories when a task calls for it.
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