claude-code - 💡(How to fix) Fix [FEATURE] Global CLAUDE.md preferences should apply across all projects without needing to be duplicated in project-level memory

Preflight Checklist

• I have searched existing requests and this feature hasn't been requested yet
• This is a single feature request (not multiple features)

Problem Statement

Global preferences should not need to be re-taught at the project level.

Global CLAUDE.md rules are being effectively shadowed by project-level memory entries, requiring the user to duplicate preferences per-project. This is a genuinely frustrating limitation and I appreciate any attempts to address / mitigate this.

Proposed Solution

A few options, roughly in order of simplicity:

1. Merge rather than override — when loading context, apply global CLAUDE.md first, then layer project-level memory on top. Project entries add or refine; they never silently replace. If a project memory conflicts with a global rule, the global rule wins unless the project entry explicitly overrides it.

2. Global rules as non-overridable anchors — introduce a distinction between preferences (can be project-overridden) and rules (cannot). Users mark rules in global CLAUDE.md with something like ! or a [rule] tag, and those are guaranteed to apply everywhere regardless of project memory.

3. Visibility warning — when writing a project memory entry that duplicates or conflicts with a global CLAUDE.md rule, warn the user rather than silently accepting it. At minimum this makes the shadowing explicit.

Option 1 is the most natural fix and probably the least disruptive to implement — the current behaviour of "project overrides global" is likely a side-effect of load order rather than a deliberate design decision, so reversing the precedence (or merging) may be a small change with a large quality-of-life improvement.

Alternative Solutions

No response

Priority

Medium - Would be very helpful

Feature Category

Interactive mode (TUI)

Use Case Example

All the time. There are some basic tenets that I wish to always follow.

Additional Context

No response