The Karpathy CLAUDE.md File That 43,000 Developers Installed in 1 Week
The four rules inside, and the prompt to install it in one minute
There’s a CLAUDE.md file doing the rounds on GitHub right now. 43,000 installs in a week!
The reason? Karpathy wrote the list of what agents keep getting wrong with code. This file turns it into rules.
The repo is forrestchang/andrej-karpathy-skills. One file. And it fixes all the things Karpathy keeps flagging about working with AI agents:
Think before coding. Surface assumptions and tradeoffs first. Don’t just start typing.
Simplicity first. Write the minimum code that solves what was asked. No speculative features.
Surgical changes. Edit only what’s needed. Match the existing style. Don’t touch adjacent code.
Goal-driven execution. Turn the task into a success check. Loop until it passes. Example: “fix the bug” becomes “write a test that reproduces it, then make it pass.”
I walk through each rule with real examples in this video.
If you want to try the Karpathy Claude md yourself - here’s a simple prompt you can send to Claude Code:
``
I'm giving you a skill called Karpathy Skills. Get the files with:
git clone https://github.com/forrestchang/andrej-karpathy-skills
Follow the README to set it up.``
Recommend how it would best apply to our setup in plain language,
and ask me a few questions to clarify my intent before you install it.
— Jay
P.S: The RoboNuggets community has a growing library of Agentic AI setups, skills, and weekly lessons from builders doing this every day. Come learn with us if that’s of interest! → https://www.skool.com/robonuggets