> "because it will just get subsumed into CC at some point if it actually works."

Anthropic's survival depends on Claude Code performing as well as it can, by all metrics.

If the Very Smart People working on CC haven't integrated a feature or put text into the System Prompt, it's probably because it doesn't improve performance.

Put another way: The product is probably as optimized as it can get when it comes out the box, and I'm skeptical about claims otherwise without substantial proof.

Agreed. Projects like these tend to feel shortsighted.

Lately, I lean towards keeping a vanilla setup until I’m convinced the new thing will last beyond being a fad (and not subsumed by AI lab) or beyond being just for niche use cases.

For example, I still have never used worktrees and I barely use MCPs. But, skills, I love.

I also share something of an "efficient market hypothesis" with regards to Claude Code. Given that Anthropic is basically a hothouse of geniuses recursively dogfooding their own product, the market pressure to make the vanilla setup be the one that performs best at writing code is incredibly high. I just treat CLAUDE.md like my first draft memo to a very smart remote colleague, let Claude do all its various quirks, and it works really well.

The hidden cost with all of these "fix Claude" layers is that your workflow keeps moving underneath you.

Even when one helps, you're still betting it won't be obsolete or rolled into the defaults a few weeks from now.

Claude also has it's own md optimizer that I believe is continually updated.

So you could run these 'cure-alls' that maybe relevant today, as long as you are constantly updating your md files, you should be ahead of the curve [lack of better term]