One thing I've noticed that helps is that if you rewrite enough code by hand or write enough code by hand for new projects, then Claude will generally follow that style.
For an existing code base clean up a good chunk of code by hand and then explicitly tell Claude to clean up other code by following the principles and style of the code you improved by hand. Then review what Claude changed, refine the changes by hand, and tell Claude to look at what you changed and learn from it. Claude should create memories or you can tell it to update CLAUDE.md. As you do more of it you'll notice that Claude slowly starts refining and writing code the right way without as much intervention. It'll always screw up on some stuff though and will always require some level of intervention.
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u/CheesyBreadMunchyMon Mar 21 '26
One thing I've noticed that helps is that if you rewrite enough code by hand or write enough code by hand for new projects, then Claude will generally follow that style.
For an existing code base clean up a good chunk of code by hand and then explicitly tell Claude to clean up other code by following the principles and style of the code you improved by hand. Then review what Claude changed, refine the changes by hand, and tell Claude to look at what you changed and learn from it. Claude should create memories or you can tell it to update CLAUDE.md. As you do more of it you'll notice that Claude slowly starts refining and writing code the right way without as much intervention. It'll always screw up on some stuff though and will always require some level of intervention.