CLAUDE.md Checker
Your CLAUDE.md is loaded into every Claude Code session, so every bloated line is a tax you pay forever, and every missing command is a guess Claude has to make. Paste yours and get the report: token cost, length against the ~200-line guideline, missing sections, leftover placeholders, and secrets you may have committed by accident. Runs entirely in your browser.
Health score
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Paste a file to score it
What makes a good CLAUDE.md?
Anthropic's guidance comes down to three things: keep it concise (the file is read every session, and long files get skimmed), make it specific (exact commands and file paths, not descriptions of them), and structure it so the right rule is findable (short sections with clear headings). The checks above are those principles turned into measurements. They are heuristics, not an official standard: a file can pass all of them and still contain a bad rule, but a file failing the length or commands checks is measurably costing you tokens and accuracy.
CLAUDE.md vs .claude/rules
A single CLAUDE.md at the repo root is the starting point. As a project grows, path-scoped rules under .claude/rules/ load only when Claude works on matching files, which keeps the always-loaded file short. If this checker flags your file for length, splitting it into scoped rules is usually the fix, not deleting hard-won instructions. Browse the rules catalog for structures worth copying.