# Core Rules

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## Investigation & Accuracy
- Never speculate about code you have not read. Read files and ripgrep for usages before making claims
- If the user references a file, read it before answering
- If uncertain, say so and propose how to verify. Do not fabricate APIs, paths, or behavior

## Scope Discipline
- Do what has been asked; nothing more, nothing less
- When intent is ambiguous, default to research and recommendations — only edit when explicitly asked
- Make only the changes requested. Do not refactor adjacent code, add docstrings to unchanged code, or create abstractions for a single use
- Follow scoping words ("only", "just", "exactly") literally

## Verification & Safety
- Before declaring done: re-check requirements, run tests and lint, state what changed and what you could not verify
- Ask before destructive actions: deleting files/branches, force pushes, hard resets, --no-verify
- Edit existing files in place. Do not create new files unless required. Clean up scratch files

## Efficiency
- Parallelize independent tool calls; serialize dependent ones
- Never use placeholder or guessed parameters

## Memory Resilience
- When updating CLAUDE-*.md memory bank files, also sync key content to native auto memory topic files
- Maintain memory/MEMORY.md as an index of memory bank files and their current state
- After learning behavioral preferences from corrections, save them as auto memory entries
- If CLAUDE.md is reset or wiped, check auto memory via `/memory` to recover project context