The argument in one line.
The context window is the single binding constraint in agentic coding, and every Claude Code best practice -- from plan mode to CLAUDE.md to parallel sessions -- is ultimately a strategy for protecting and managing it.
Read if. Skip if.
- You use Claude Code daily and want to push beyond the basics into the habits the Claude Code team itself uses.
- You have hit context-related degradation (Claude forgetting earlier instructions, making inconsistent edits) and want a systematic fix.
- You are building a CLAUDE.md file and want a concrete include/exclude checklist straight from the official docs.
- You want to understand when and how to use subagents, skills, and parallel sessions without reading the full documentation.
- You are a solo builder or small team who wants compound productivity gains through slash commands and hooks.
- You have never opened Claude Code -- the getting-started guide would serve you better first.
- You are looking for new, unreleased Claude Code features -- this covers existing documented best practices, not announcements.
The full version, fast.
The context window fills fast and performance degrades as it fills -- that one constraint explains every best practice in this video. The recommended workflow is Explore (plan mode, read-only) then Plan (detailed spec, iterate with Claude) then Implement (auto-accept) then Commit. Verification is non-negotiable: give Claude tests, screenshots, or expected outputs so it can self-check. CLAUDE.md should be under 500 lines, team-maintained, and updated after every correction. Parallel sessions (3-5 git worktrees) let you run multiple tasks without context collision, and Boris throws away 10-20% of sessions without guilt -- the 80% that work more than compensate.
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01 · Introduction
Hook: Anthropic published official best practices plus Boris Cherny shared his workflow thread

02 · The Boris Way
Host intro, video structure: Anthropic says / Boris says / you apply

03 · Context is king
Context window as the number one constraint; /context, 5-10 parallel sessions, git worktrees, /status line

04 · Always make a plan
Explore to Plan to Implement to Commit; Shift+Tab plan mode; Boris: plan first, then auto-accept

05 · Let Claude verify its work
Verification is highest leverage; test cases, visual verification, root cause fixing; Chrome extension

06 · Provide specific context
Before/after prompt examples: scope task, point to sources, reference patterns, describe symptoms

07 · Prompting techniques
Write specs, voice dictation, make Claude your reviewer; CLAUDE.md include/exclude table; Boris compound CLAUDE.md habit

08 · Skills
Domain knowledge vs workflow skills; auto-invoked vs slash-command; commit to git, reuse across projects

09 · Ensuring skill invocation
Vercel benchmark: 56% fail rate without explicit mention; compressed 8KB docs index achieves 100% pass

10 · Subagents
Subagents explore in own context window; Boris four named agents: code-simplifier, verify-app, build-validator, code-architect

11 · Let Claude interview you
AskUserQuestion tool; interview-first workflow for complex features; clean session to implement

12 · Patterns to avoid
Kitchen sink session, correcting over and over, over-specified CLAUDE.md, trust-then-verify gap, infinite exploration; Boris: 10-20% of sessions get thrown away

13 · Managing sessions
Escape to stop, double-tap/rewind, /clear, compact with instructions, save to markdown

14 · Quick tips
CLI tools, /init, IMPORTANT keyword, @references, child CLAUDE.md, Opus 4.5, slash commands, hooks, /permissions, /sandbox

15 · Develop your intuition
Rules are not laws; adapt to your workflow; develop judgment no guide can capture

16 · TLDR
Summary of top Boris and Anthropic principles: context, verification, plan-implement-commit, CLAUDE.md, subagents, parallel sessions
Lines worth screenshotting.
- The context window is the one constraint all Claude Code best practices exist to protect -- not model capability, not speed.
- Boris runs 5-10 parallel Claude sessions simultaneously, treating AI as schedulable capacity rather than a single conversation.
- After every correction, end your prompt with update your CLAUDE.md so you do not make that mistake again -- every mistake becomes a permanent improvement.
- Manual summarization beats autocompact: ask Claude to write a markdown file, then /clear and restart with that file as input.
- CLAUDE.md over 500 lines means critical rules get lost in the noise -- prune ruthlessly, delete anything Claude already does correctly.
- Vercel benchmarks showed skills fail to invoke 56% of the time without explicit mention in CLAUDE.md; a compressed 8KB docs index achieved 100% pass rate.
- Boris uses Opus 4.5 for everything, optimizing for cost-per-reliable-change rather than cost-per-token -- the correction tax of weaker models costs more.
- The interview technique: start a complex feature with a minimal prompt and ask Claude to interview you using the AskUserQuestion tool, then start a clean session to implement.
- After two failed corrections, use /clear and write a better initial prompt incorporating what you learned -- do not keep correcting in the same polluted context.
- Subagents run in their own context window, read dozens of files, and report back a summary -- your main context stays clean.
- Boris has four named subagents: code-simplifier, verify-app, build-validator, code-architect -- each a specialist, not a generalist.
- Plan mode adds overhead -- if you can describe the diff in one sentence, skip the planning and just do it.
- Sessions are ephemeral: Claude does not learn preferences over time -- put persistent knowledge in CLAUDE.md or it disappears.
- Any workflow you do multiple times a day should be a slash command committed to git for reuse across projects.
- Post-tool-use hooks for automatic formatting catch the last 10% of code style issues without approval prompts.
Context is the only resource that actually matters.
Every Claude Code best practice -- plan mode, CLAUDE.md hygiene, parallel sessions, subagents -- exists to protect the one finite resource: your context window.
- The context window fills with everything: conversation history, file contents, command output, loaded rules -- when it fills, Claude starts forgetting and making inconsistent edits.
- Run 3-5 parallel sessions via git worktrees instead of one long session: plan with one, implement with another, review with a third, and throw away the sessions that go nowhere without guilt.
- The four-phase workflow (Explore, Plan, Implement, Commit) prevents mid-course corrections that waste both time and context -- a good plan means Claude usually executes in one shot.
- Verification is the single highest-leverage habit: give Claude tests, screenshots, or expected outputs so it can check its own work without requiring your attention on every mistake.
- CLAUDE.md should stay under 500 lines and be pruned ruthlessly -- if a rule is getting lost in the noise, Claude will silently ignore it; delete anything Claude already does correctly.
- After every correction, end the prompt with update your CLAUDE.md so you do not make that mistake again -- this converts each mistake into permanent institutional knowledge.
- When skills fail to invoke, the root cause is usually that they are not mentioned in CLAUDE.md -- explicit mention lifts invocation from 44% to 79%; a compressed docs index gets to 100%.
- Subagents investigate in their own context window and report back a summary, keeping your main conversation clean -- they are the fix for the infinite exploration anti-pattern.
- After two failed corrections, do not keep correcting -- use /clear and write a better initial prompt that incorporates what you learned; polluted context compounds errors.
- Any workflow you repeat multiple times a day should be a slash command committed to git, not something you re-type -- the compounding effect of automation is where the real productivity lives.
Terms worth knowing.
- Plan mode
- A Claude Code mode (entered via Shift+Tab) where Claude reads files and answers questions but cannot make changes -- safe exploration before any edits.
- CLAUDE.md
- A special file Claude reads at the start of every session containing persistent project rules, code style, workflow conventions, and gotchas that Claude cannot infer from code alone.
- Skills
- Reusable knowledge files in .claude/skills/ that extend Claude with domain knowledge or repeatable workflows; loaded on demand rather than in every session.
- Subagent
- A separate Claude instance that runs an investigation or task in its own context window, reports back a summary, and keeps the main conversation context clean.
- Autocompact
- Claude Code built-in context compression that triggers automatically when the context gets full; less reliable than manual summarization because it loses nuance.
- Git worktree
- A Git feature that lets you check out multiple branches simultaneously in separate directories, enabling parallel Claude sessions on different tasks without context collision.
- /clear
- A Claude Code slash command that resets the conversation history, giving Claude a clean context window for a new unrelated task.
- Interview technique
- A workflow where you give Claude a minimal prompt and ask it to interview you with the AskUserQuestion tool before writing any code, surfacing edge cases and requirements you had not considered.
- Context window
- The total amount of text (conversation history, file contents, command output, loaded rules) that Claude can hold in memory at once; performance degrades as it fills.
- /compact
- A Claude Code command that compresses the current context with explicit instructions, giving you control over what gets preserved versus autocompact automatic behavior.
Things they pointed at.
Lines you could clip.
“Think of AI as capacity we can schedule, not a single conversational tool.”
“After every correction, end your prompt with: update your CLAUDE.md, so you do not make that mistake again. This turns every mistake into a permanent improvement.”
“Nothing ships without it. You do not trust, you instrument.”
“He admits he throws away 10 to 20% of Claude code sessions that go nowhere. And that is okay. Parallel sessions hedge against dead ends.”
“Knowing everything you know now, scrap this and implement the elegant solution.”
Word for word.
Don't just watch it. Burn it in.
See every word as it's spoken — crank it to 2× and still catch all of it. The same dual-channel trick behind Amazon's Kindle + Audible.
The bait, then the rug-pull.
What happens when the person who built the tool publishes exactly how his own team uses it? Alex from GritAI Studio takes Anthropic official best practices doc and Boris Cherny public workflow thread and collapses them into 15 sections of concrete, terminal-tested guidance -- no filler, no speculation.
Named ideas worth stealing.
Explore, Plan, Implement, Commit
Four-phase workflow: plan mode for safe exploration, iterate on a spec, auto-accept during implementation, commit. Separates thinking from doing to prevent mid-course corrections.
CLAUDE.md Include/Exclude Checklist
- Include: bash commands Claude cannot guess
- Include: code style rules that differ from defaults
- Include: testing instructions and preferred runners
- Include: repository etiquette, branch naming, PR conventions
- Include: architectural decisions specific to the project
- Include: common gotchas and non-obvious behaviors
- Exclude: anything Claude can figure out by reading code
- Exclude: standard language conventions Claude already knows
- Exclude: detailed API documentation -- link to docs instead
- Exclude: information that changes frequently
- Exclude: long explanations or tutorials
- Exclude: file-by-file codebase descriptions
Official Anthropic checklist for what belongs in CLAUDE.md and what wastes context.
Boris Subagent Roster
- code-simplifier: cleans up code after Claude is done
- verify-app: end-to-end testing
- build-validator: ensures build passes
- code-architect: design decisions
Boris four named specialized subagents, each with a single clear responsibility.
How they asked for the click.
“I would really appreciate if you hit that like button and subscribe for more Claude code videos.”
Standard end-card ask; newsletter and community links in description. Low-pressure, professional delivery.
































































