The field guide

The one rule that changes everything, and the three habits that separate expert sessions from frustrating ones.

The four models, the low→max effort ladder, fast mode, and the two keywords worth memorizing — plus quick picks by task.

Manual, accept-edits, plan, auto, and bypass — what each does, when to reach for it, and why plan mode is the highest-leverage habit.

The finite context window, the commands that keep it healthy, and the difference between the CLAUDE.md you write and the memory Claude writes.

Four ways to teach Claude new tricks — and how to tell which one you actually need.

Three tiers of fan-out — background-by-default subagents, parallel worktrees, and dynamic multi-agent workflows — and when each earns its cost.

The desktop app as a workspace, the phone as a remote, the cloud as an overnight worker — and the one continuous thread that flows across all three.

Explore-plan-code-commit, the verification loop, and the handful of structural patterns experts reach for — plus the anti-patterns to unlearn.

The state of the art in team practice — CLAUDE.md as shared infrastructure, workflows committed as skills, parallel agents across worktrees and the cloud, one agent grading another, and the guardrails that hold at org scale.