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Marginal

Claude Code

Claude Code is Anthropic’s coding agent and Marginal’s default. Its context lives in CLAUDE.md files and a .claude folder, in the project and in your home directory.

Select it in Settings ▸ AI ▸ Coding agent.

What Marginal lists

Section titled “What Marginal lists”
Section In the workspace In your home folder
CLAUDE.md CLAUDE.md in the root and in any subfolder; CLAUDE.local.md beside it, badged local; .claude/CLAUDE.md ~/.claude/CLAUDE.md
RULES .claude/rules/**/*.md ~/.claude/rules/**/*.md
SKILLS .claude/skills/*/SKILL.md ~/.claude/skills/*/SKILL.md
AGENTS .claude/agents/*.md ~/.claude/agents/*.md
COMMANDS .claude/commands/**/*.md ~/.claude/commands/**/*.md

CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR, when set in the environment Marginal was launched from, replaces ~/.claude as the home-folder location.

Skills and sub-agents are named by the name: in their front matter, and show its description: as their second line. Rules keep their file name; commands appear as /name, with a subfolder in front as /folder/name.

How Claude Code uses these files

Section titled “How Claude Code uses these files”
  • CLAUDE.md is loaded at the start of a session in this order: the managed file, ~/.claude/CLAUDE.md, then the project’s files from the outermost parent down, each followed by its CLAUDE.local.md. A CLAUDE.md in a subfolder is loaded on demand, when Claude reads a file there. @path lines import other files, up to four hops deep.
  • Rules in .claude/rules are markdown with an optional paths: list of globs in the front matter. A rule without paths: is loaded at the start; one with paths: is loaded when a matching file is read. Subfolders and symlinks are followed.
  • Skills are folders holding a SKILL.md plus any supporting files. The front matter gives the name, description, and whether the skill can be invoked by you (/name), by Claude, or both. Custom commands in .claude/commands are the older form of the same thing: still read, one /name per file, but new work belongs in skills.
  • Sub-agents in .claude/agents are markdown with a front matter name, description, and options such as tools, model, and memory; the body is the sub-agent’s system prompt.

The project-level files take precedence over the ones in your home folder when a name clashes.

Not listed

Section titled “Not listed”

.claude/settings.json, settings.local.json, and ~/.claude/settings.json (including the hooks defined there), .mcp.json, output styles, workflows, worktrees, plugins, the auto-memory folder under ~/.claude/projects, and the managed paths under /Library/Application Support/ClaudeCode, /etc/claude-code, or C:\Program Files\ClaudeCode.

Checked against the Claude Code documentation on 1 September 2026.