Operating The Harness

Operate Claude Code itself well — keep CLAUDE.md lean as a context budget and engineer the harness (hooks, permissions, a runnable verification loop) so Claude checks its own work instead of you. Use whenever setting up or auditing a CLAUDE.md / AGENTS.md / .claude/ directory, writing or debugging hooks, settings.json permissions, MCP servers (.mcp.json), slash commands or Skills (SKILL.md), subagents (.claude/agents), or designing a plan-mode / verification / parallel (worktree, headless) workflow. Also fires on skill-mechanics symptoms: skill not listed, not triggering, スキルが発火しない, listing budget, /doctor. Cut: skill CONTENT craft — distillation, sibling cuts, fire/no-fire trigger sets, description wording → forging-skills (co-fires on skill authoring; this skill owns the harness contract). MANDATORY — read this before editing any .claude/ config, memory, or hook file. Two precedence-setting rules live inline: (1) CLAUDE.md is a context budget — target under 200 lines, lazy-load the rest via path-scoped .claude/rules/*.md or Skills, never config-as-prose; (2) give Claude a machine-readable check and put hard enforcement in hooks/settings.json, not in prose. Trigger on CLAUDE.md, AGENTS.md, .claude/rules, settings.json, /memory, /init, /compact, /permissions, /hooks, /doctor, plan mode, hooks, PreToolUse, PostToolUse, bypassPermissions, sandbox, subagent, .claude/agents, worktree, SKILL.md, slash command, $ARGUMENTS, MCP, .mcp.json, headless, claude -p, verification loop.

mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills/operating-the-harness
curl -L https://claudskills.com/skills/operating-the-harness/SKILL.md \
  -o ~/.claude/skills/operating-the-harness/SKILL.md

@misc{operating-the-harness-2026,
  author    = {fuyutarow},
  title     = {Operating The Harness [Claude Code skill]},
  year      = {2026},
  publisher = {ClaudSkills},
  url       = {https://claudskills.com/skills/operating-the-harness/}
}