Field note 1
Introduction to be written.
Data
Method
The corpus is every CLAUDE.md and AGENTS.md linked from the awesome-claude-code and awesome-claude-md lists, fetched at HEAD on 2026-10-01 and deduplicated by content: 336 files. For R006, the corpus is 384 rules files from 305 public repos, including Copilot, Cursor and Gemini files, each checked against a shallow clone of its repository at HEAD.
Rule hit rates, before and after B0
B0 changed R002 (VagueVerbs) and R005 (DuplicateLines) only. 336 files.
| Rule | Severity | Files flagged, before | Files flagged, after | Findings, before | Findings, after |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| R001 RationaleProse | Info | 96 (28.6%) | 96 (28.6%) | 269 | 269 |
| R002 VagueVerbs | Warning | 156 (46.4%) | 48 (14.3%) | 436 | 90 |
| R003 ContradictoryModals | Error | 0 (0.0%) | 0 (0.0%) | 0 | 0 |
| R004 FileLength | Warning | 129 (38.4%) | 129 (38.4%) | 129 | 129 |
| R005 DuplicateLines | Warning | 72 (21.4%) | 15 (4.5%) | 373 | 24 |
| Before | After | |
|---|---|---|
| Median score | 96 | 99 |
| Grade A | 232 | 308 |
| Grade B | 47 | 22 |
| Grade C | 43 | 4 |
| Grade D | 14 | 2 |
| Grade F | 0 | 0 |
R002 by term (files / findings):
| Term | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| ensure | 74 / 123 | 9 / 12 |
| handle | 57 / 90 | 16 / 20 |
| appropriate | 45 / 85 | 19 / 25 |
| manage | 27 / 33 | 2 / 4 |
| improve | 22 / 24 | 2 / 2 |
| properly | 22 / 26 | 9 / 9 |
| as needed | 18 / 21 | 6 / 7 |
| optimize | 14 / 21 | 2 / 2 |
| clean up | 14 / 17 | 7 / 7 |
| appropriately | 7 / 10 | 5 / 7 |
R006: stale references
384 files, 305 repos.
| Pass | References extracted | Files flagged |
|---|---|---|
| First | 13,743 | 228 (59.4%) |
| Final | 5,646 | 46 (12.0%) |
Final-pass references by kind: paths 4,268, package scripts 1,051, make targets 327.
The final pass produced 97 findings in 46 files: 23 CLAUDE.md, 21 AGENTS.md, 1 .github/copilot-instructions.md, 1 .cursorrules. Each file was judged by hand: 32–35 contain at least one stale reference; 11–14 (2.9–3.6% of the corpus) contain only false positives.
Examples, checked against the clones at HEAD:
| Repository | File | Line | Reference | At HEAD |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| gaearon/overreacted.io | CLAUDE.md |
34, 56 | app/posts.js |
Not present |
| gaearon/overreacted.io | CLAUDE.md |
46 | app/page.js |
Not present; app/page.tsx exists |
| mozilla/pdf.js | AGENTS.md |
118 | web/viewer.mjs |
Not present; web/viewer.js exists |
| oven-sh/bun | CLAUDE.md |
142 | src/shell/ |
Not present; src/shell_parser/ exists |
| huggingface/transformers | .github/copilot-instructions.md |
17, 26 | make fixup |
No fixup target in the Makefile |
| calcom/cal.com | AGENTS.md |
130 | packages/features/ee/workflows/lib/constants.ts |
Not present; no packages/features/ee/ folder |
| (one repository) | CLAUDE.md |
11, 12, 109, 124 | npm run check-version, npm run deploy |
No such scripts in package.json |