Exactly! Unless you use something that doesn’t read CLAUDE.md, then you’d still just tell the model to read the file as a part of its work.
What helped me a bunch was having prebuild scripts (can be Bash, can be Python, can be whatever) for each of the architectural or style conventions I want to enforce. Tools like ESLint are also nice but focused a bit more on the code than architecture/structure.
Problems start when a colleague might just remove some of those due to personal preference without discussion but then you have other problems - in my experience, with proper controls in place AI will cause less issues and friction than people (ofc depending on culture fit).
…and then add that to your CLAUDE.md, and never worry about having to say it again manually.