Why a Repeated Procedure Belongs in a Skill, Not CLAUDE.md
Every engineer keeps re-explaining the same multi-step "how we add a new API endpoint" procedure to Claude Code at the start of relevant sessions.
What's the best place for that procedure, and why?
The correct answer is "A skill — it loads on demand instead of every session."
A SKILL.md under .claude/skills/<name>/ loads only when relevant
(or via /skill-name), so the procedure's tokens are paid for only
on the sessions that actually add an endpoint. Pasting it into
CLAUDE.md instead means every session pays for it regardless of
relevance, pushing the file toward the over-specified anti-pattern.
A rules file without paths: frontmatter behaves like a
globally-loaded file too, and re-explaining it in every prompt is the
exact repetition this is meant to eliminate.
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