Claude Code Creator Advises Deleting Configuration Files Every Six Months as AI Models Improve

Boris Cherny, creator of Claude Code at Anthropic, recommends developers delete their CLAUDE.md files, skills, and hooks every six months—a counterintuitive strategy designed to let increasingly capable AI models work without being constrained by outdated instructions written for weaker predecessors. The advice stems from a fundamental shift in how Claude Code operates: when Anthropic released Opus 5 earlier this year, the team deleted 80 percent of Claude Code's system prompt and found the model performed better, not worse. As language models improve with each generation, instructions that made sense for earlier versions can paradoxically hobble newer ones by forcing them to follow rigid procedures they no longer need.