--- title: Anatomy of the .claude/ Folder | daily.dev description: A comprehensive guide to the .claude/ folder structure used by Claude Code. Covers CLAUDE.md (the main instruction file), CLAUDE.local.md for personal... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/anatomy-of-the-claude-folder-w3qywngzo twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Anatomy of the .claude/ Folder | daily.dev og:description: A comprehensive guide to the .claude/ folder structure used by Claude Code. Covers CLAUDE.md (the main instruction file), CLAUDE.local.md for personal... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/anatomy-of-the-claude-folder-w3qywngzo og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/W3QywngzO.png og:image:alt: Anatomy of the .claude/ Folder og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Anatomy of the .claude/ Folder **[Daily Dose of Data Science \| Avi Chawla \| Substack](https://daily.dev/sources/dailydoseofds)** · 13 min read · 36 upvotes · 3 comments ## Summary A comprehensive guide to the .claude/ folder structure used by Claude Code. Covers CLAUDE.md (the main instruction file), CLAUDE.local.md for personal overrides, the rules/ folder for modular scoped instructions, commands/ for custom slash commands with shell injection, skills/ for auto-invoked reusable workflows, agents/ for specialized subagent personas with isolated context, and settings.json for permission control. Also explains the global ~/.claude/ directory for cross-project preferences and session memory. Includes a practical step-by-step setup progression and a full folder structure reference. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Community discussion Top comments from developers on daily.dev. **@allinonetools** · 1 upvotes > This is a really helpful breakdown. Understanding how to structure rules, commands, and agents properly makes it much easier to keep Claude workflows clean and reusable across projects. **@giorgishalvashvili** · 0 upvotes > nice **@mheob** · 0 upvotes > Thanks. A clearly written, useful article. --- Tags: [#ai-assisted-development](https://daily.dev/tags/ai-assisted-development), [#claude-code](https://daily.dev/tags/claude-code), [#prompt-engineering](https://daily.dev/tags/prompt-engineering) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/anatomy-of-the-claude-folder-w3qywngzo) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Anatomy of the .claude/ Folder","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/anatomy-of-the-claude-folder-w3qywngzo","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/anatomy-of-the-claude-folder-w3qywngzo"},"datePublished":"2026-03-23T19:39:41.114Z","dateModified":"2026-03-30T02:18:08.128Z","description":"A comprehensive guide to the .claude/ folder structure used by Claude Code. 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Understanding how to structure rules, commands, and agents properly makes it much easier to keep Claude workflows clean and reusable across projects.","datePublished":"2026-03-27T03:16:55.674Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/W3QywngzO#c-sBvGHAtBk","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"AllInOneTools","url":"https://daily.dev/allinonetools","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--4ZT8QlF0--/f_auto/v1769790028/avatars/avatar_igzBsWloJeaegzm9bQltZ?_a=BAMAMiiu0"},"interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":1}},{"@type":"Comment","text":"nice","datePublished":"2026-03-29T10:19:34.567Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/W3QywngzO#c-2K9yIwp6t","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Giorgi Shalvashvili","url":"https://daily.dev/giorgishalvashvili","image":"https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/a/ACg8ocIwuIzmwaSYq8PEmOWByDg7J5ZxDHoG2lH-05--GDMIH4LQQ1tM=s96-c"}},{"@type":"Comment","text":"Thanks. A clearly written, useful article.","datePublished":"2026-04-02T15:07:43.384Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/W3QywngzO#c-5mikOB0YP","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Alex Böhm","url":"https://daily.dev/mheob","image":"https://avatars3.githubusercontent.com/u/3983539?v=4"}}]} ```