The Problem Nobody Warns You About

You wrote the rule clearly. You put it in your CLAUDE.md.

Never push to production without explicit user confirmation.

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Claude read it. You can tell because it follows it most of the time. Then one session, mid-task, it pushes to production without asking.

No error. No warning. No "I know you said not to, but..."

Just: done.

This is not a bug. It is how CLAUDE.md actually works — and most developers do not know this until something breaks.

CLAUDE.md Rules Are Not Hard Constraints

Here is what the Claude Code documentation does not say loudly enough:

CLAUDE.md instructions are injected as user-turn context, not as system prompt.

This matters because:

User-turn context is weighted , not enforced

When context fills or instructions conflict, lower-priority items get deprioritized

Claude is balancing your rules against task completion pressure, conversation history, and other instructions

There is no "rule lock" — every…