crew-best-practices

Audits Claude Code usage against community best practices for context, planning, hooks, and skills.

2|Updated Jul 28, 2026
One-click install
npx skills add https://github.com/mbadali25/useful-claude-add-ons --skill crew-best-practices-mbadali25
Or copy as Structured Prompt for Agent
Please help me install this Agent Skill.
Skill: crew-best-practices
Source: https://github.com/mbadali25/useful-claude-add-ons/tree/main/plugin/crew/skills/crew-best-practices
Command: npx skills add https://github.com/mbadali25/useful-claude-add-ons --skill crew-best-practices-mbadali25

SYSTEM DOCUMENTATION & REQUIREMENTS

💡 This Skill includes references (resource) components.

What problem does it solve? Teams adopting Claude Code lack a vetted reference for which community practices to follow, which to skip, and why their existing setup departs from consensus, leading to cargo-culted rules and wasted sessions re-litigating settled decisions. ## Core Features & Use Cases - Curated practice reference: Distills a twelve-source synthesis of Claude Code best practices covering context management, planning, TDD, hooks, skills, subagents, slash commands, and MCP. - Deviation audit trail: Maps each practice to what the crew plugin already implements, where it deliberately departs (recorded in an ADR), and which contradictions the source document itself leaves unresolved. - CLAUDE.md guidance: Provides size limits, the four anti-patterns, and concrete replacements for auditing or writing a repository's CLAUDE.md. - Use Case: When asked whether a repo should adopt auto-formatting hooks or a large subagent fleet, consult the references to answer with the documented trade-offs and crew's recorded position instead of guessing. ## Quick Start Ask how to apply Claude Code best practices to this repository and whether the current CLAUDE.md, hooks, and skill layout match community consensus.

Frequently Asked Questions about crew-best-practices

High-intent search queries and answers about installing and using this skill.

FAQPage Schema
How do I audit a repo's CLAUDE.md against best practices?

Check the root CLAUDE.md against the 100-200 line target and the four anti-patterns: @-file embedding, absolute prohibitions without alternatives, comprehensive manuals, and unreviewed growth. The references/claude-md.md file lists each anti-pattern with its concrete replacement.

What are the Claude Code best practices for context management?

Clear context early rather than waiting for the limit, avoid automatic /compact, and use a Document-and-Clear workflow that writes progress to a file before starting fresh. The skill recommends expressing the threshold as a fraction of the window so it scales across model context sizes.

Should I use custom subagents or clone the main agent?

The source document records this as an unresolved contradiction: specialized subagents suit narrow tasks, while clones avoid gatekeeping context. Crew deliberately uses specialized subagents because a clone inherits the blind spots a review exists to find, with the trade-offs recorded in an ADR.

Are auto-formatting hooks a good idea in Claude Code?

No, the source document cites 160k tokens consumed over three rounds by auto-formatting hooks and recommends running formatters manually between sessions. Crew follows this by running lint as a check at Stop time rather than rewriting files during edits.

When should I prefer skills over MCP servers?

Prefer skills for stateless tools, which should be CLIs documented in a skill, and reserve MCP for stateful environments like Playwright. The document warns that more than 20k tokens of MCP tools cripples a session.