first-principles.md

When to use this

• When you want Claude to reason from fundamentals rather than pattern-matching to familiar solutions
• When solving a novel problem where conventional approaches have already failed
• When you want deliberate reasoning traces that expose assumptions before reaching conclusions

How to use

1. Open the template on GitHub and copy its content: rules/first-principles.md
2. Place the file inside .claude/rules/ in your project (or globally in ~/.claude/ to share across all projects).
3. Edit the Markdown content to match your project conventions, team constraints, and specific context.