A pattern I keep seeing (and kept doing myself): Claude ignores a rule, so you open CLAUDE.md and rewrite the wording. Stronger verbs, ALL CAPS, a threat or two. Nothing changes — because the file never entered the context window in the first place. You were editing a document nobody was reading.
Claude Code has two slash commands that get conflated here, and they answer different questions:
/context answers: what actually made it into this session?
/memory answers: what should future sessions start with?
One is an audit. The other is an editor. Mixing them up is how you burn an afternoon polishing prose that was never loaded.
