May 30, 2026
I hit this exact issue last week. My global CLAUDE.md had grown to 2000+ lines of "helpful context" that was eating tokens on every single prompt. Now I keep globals to maybe 50 lines max - port configs, my writing voice, and safety rules. Everything else goes in project files.
For Codex I went even stricter. Global CODEX.md is literally just the command shortcuts I use everywhere. Project-specific patterns live in the local file so they don't pollute other repos.