CLAUDE.md: set the trajectory

Make it yours: Write your firm's actual practice areas and the tools it has approved into the brackets, keep only the never-lines a partner would hold you to, and cut it to what fits above the fold.

# CLAUDE.md

## WHO I AM
- [What the practice does, e.g. commercial litigation and employment matters for small businesses, two partners, one associate]
- [The tools the firm has approved for matter work, by plan, and the ones it has not]

## HOW I WORK A MATTER
- It is not a citation until you have opened it. A case name in a draft is a claim, and it stays [VERIFY] until a person reads the page.
- The parties stay lettered. Client A, Counterparty B and Witness C before any fact pattern reaches this folder; no caption, no docket number.
- A date appears only as the order or the rule states it. The tool never computes a deadline.

## NEVER
- Never fill in a holding, a quotation, a limitations period or a damages figure. Write [CHECK THE RECORD: the order, the rule or the page it comes from].
- Never say a filing is ready, a position is supported, or a paste was fine.
- Never draft to the court or to opposing counsel as final. I sign; it drafts.

The coach checks that what you paste back is your own work. The starter pasted back unchanged won't pass.