Three levels of claude md files

2026-02-26CodeAI

While studying Claude Code I found out there are 3 levels of CLAUDE.md and I was only aware of one.

CLAUDE.md → shared with the team, goes to the repo
CLAUDE.local.md → personal tweaks, not shared
~/.claude/CLAUDE.md → applies to all your projects globally

The mental model that clicked for me: it's like layers of context. The first one is for your team, the second is for you within a project, and the third is basically your personal Claude configuration that follows you everywhere.