# andrej-karpathy-skills — a single CLAUDE.md for better Claude Code behavior

> A drop-in CLAUDE.md that teaches Claude Code to stop overreaching and start verifying.

- Org: Forrest Chang
- Date: 2026-01-27
- Category: resource, tool
- Source: https://github.com/forrestchang/andrej-karpathy-skills
- Canonical page: https://ai-tldr.dev/releases/forrestchang-karpathy-skills/

## In short

A single drop-in CLAUDE.md file encoding four rules for steering Claude Code — think first, keep it simple, make surgical changes, verify against explicit success criteria. 16.4k stars, +4.9k this week.

## What it is

A single markdown file you either install as a Claude Code plugin or curl into a project as CLAUDE.md. Forrest Chang distilled it from watching LLMs burn context on the same coding failure modes — unexamined assumptions, over-refactoring, and declaring success without evidence.

## How it works

The file encodes four principles that Claude Code ingests at every session: 'Think Before Coding' forces explicit reasoning and clarifying questions, 'Simplicity First' bans speculative code and premature abstractions, 'Surgical Changes' restricts edits to what the user actually asked for, and 'Goal-Driven Execution' turns imperative tasks into declarative success criteria that have to be verified before the agent claims done.

## Why it matters

Coding agents routinely over-refactor, invent unused helpers, and report success without running tests. This file is the terse, opinionated corrective that a lot of Claude Code power users were writing by hand. It crossed 16k stars in a few weeks — adoption is happening because it works and you can apply it in one command.

## Who it's for

Anyone using Claude Code daily.

## Try it

curl -L https://raw.githubusercontent.com/forrestchang/andrej-karpathy-skills/main/CLAUDE.md -o CLAUDE.md

## Links

- [Repo](https://github.com/forrestchang/andrej-karpathy-skills)
- [CLAUDE.md file](https://github.com/forrestchang/andrej-karpathy-skills/blob/main/CLAUDE.md)