Karpathy-Inspired Claude Code Guidelines

A single CLAUDE.md file to improve Claude Code behavior, derived from Andrej Karpathy's observations on LLM coding pitfalls.

The Problems

From Andrej's post:

"The models make wrong assumptions on your behalf and just run along with them without checking. They don't manage their confusion, don't seek clarifications, don't surface inconsistencies, don't present tradeoffs, don't push back when they should."

"They really like to overcomplicate code and APIs, bloat abstractions, don't clean up dead code... implement a bloated construction over 1000 lines when 100 would do."

"They still sometimes change/remove comments and code they don't sufficiently understand as side effects, even if orthogonal to the task."

The Solution

Four principles in one file:

Principle	Addresses
Think Before Coding	Wrong assumptions, hidden confusion, missing tradeoffs
Simplicity First	Overcomplication, bloated abstractions
Surgical Changes	Orthogonal edits, touching code you shouldn't
Goal-Driven Execution	Leverage through tests-first, verifiable success criteria

Install

New project (no existing CLAUDE.md):

curl -o CLAUDE.md https://raw.githubusercontent.com/forrestchang/andrej-karpthy-skills/main/CLAUDE.md

Existing project (append to your CLAUDE.md):

echo "" >> CLAUDE.md
curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/forrestchang/andrej-karpthy-skills/main/CLAUDE.md >> CLAUDE.md

Key Insight

From Andrej:

"LLMs are exceptionally good at looping until they meet specific goals... Don't tell it what to do, give it success criteria and watch it go."

The "Goal-Driven Execution" principle captures this: transform imperative instructions into declarative goals with verification loops.