CLAUDE.md hierarchy, imports and scoping

What the exam expects

• Place an instruction at the right CLAUDE.md scope given who must receive it: the whole organization, one developer in every project, the team in one repository, or one developer in one repository.
• Diagnose hierarchy problems, such as a new teammate missing conventions that live in someone's user-level file, or two files giving contradictory instructions.
• Use @path imports so each package's CLAUDE.md pulls in only the standards files its maintainer considers relevant, knowing imports organize but do not save context.
• Split a monolithic CLAUDE.md into topic files under .claude/rules/, and share rule files across repositories with symlinks.
• Verify memory files with /memory and /context, and silence irrelevant ones with claudeMdExcludes.

Key terms: CLAUDE.md (Markdown instructions Claude reads at session start); scope (managed policy, user, project or local location that decides who shares a file); import (@path/to/file inside a CLAUDE.md that expands the file into context); rules directory (.claude/rules/, auto-discovered topic files); on-demand loading (subdirectory files that load only when Claude touches a file there).

Key facts

Check yourself