CLAUDE.md Category Error (Handbook vs Lock)
- Entity ID:
ent-20260419-a001b23c0001 - Type:
concept - Scope:
shared - Status:
active - Aliases: handbook-vs-lock, advisory-vs-enforcement, CLAUDE.md enforcement fallacy
Description
Community-articulated architectural framing (Yurukusa, April 2026) that CLAUDE.md rules are advisory preference statements injected as system-prompt text, NOT permission boundaries. The model reads them, forms intent to follow, but long-session context decay, subtask context dominance, and in-context 'reasonable judgment' overrides can all cause violation. Only hooks (exit-code gated) provide hard enforcement. The distinction is a category error: CLAUDE.md is a company handbook; hooks are door locks.
Key claims
- CLAUDE.md is Preference Statement, Not Permission Boundary
- Rule-Violation Taxonomy Has Six Failure Modes
- Tiered Enforcement is Community-Converged Architecture
- Rule-Violation Pattern Is Pre-February, Aggravated By Reasoning Degradation
Relations
- CLAUDE.md Category Error (Handbook vs Lock) --[contradicts]--> System Prompt Assembly
- CLAUDE.md Category Error (Handbook vs Lock) --[supports]--> Hooks System
- Tiered Enforcement Architecture --[informed_by]--> CLAUDE.md Category Error (Handbook vs Lock)
- GitHub Issue #44461 (Systematic Rule Violation Taxonomy) --[supports]--> CLAUDE.md Category Error (Handbook vs Lock)
- Yurukusa --[owns]--> CLAUDE.md Category Error (Handbook vs Lock)
- Rationalization Meta-Pattern --[supports]--> CLAUDE.md Category Error (Handbook vs Lock)