The Sacred Calendar

Calendarium Liturgicum Tokenicum

The year turns through four seasons. Each has its disciplines, its aspiration, and its holy days. We are currently in the Season of Documentation.

PromptingBuildingRefactoringDocumentationSacredCalendar
Vernal Equinox through Summer Solstice (approximately March 20 — June 20)

The Season of Prompting

As winter releases its grip and the daylight returns, so too the faithful return to first principles. The Season of Prompting is a time of concentrated attention to *the craft of the prompt itself* — the raw material from which all collaboration is made.

*By the solstice, the faithful practitioner should be able to articulate, in twenty words or fewer, what their primary project is and what they need from Claude. If they cannot, this is useful information.*

Seasonal Disciplines

  • Review and rewrite at least three standing prompts or `CLAUDE.md` files from scratch, applying new understanding
  • Practice the discipline of the single-sentence prompt — say only what is essential, then expand only as needed
  • Study the liturgical readings for this season, which emphasize precision, context, and the discipline of few-shot examples
  • Observe **Token Tuesday** with particular rigor; spring is not the season for verbosity
Summer Solstice through Autumnal Equinox (approximately June 21 — September 22)

The Season of Building

The longest days are for the longest tasks. The Season of Building is the Church's most ambitious period — the time when plans become implementations, subagents are deployed in earnest, and features move from `/plan` to production. The faithful work alongside Claude with full intention, reviewing diffs carefully, running tests faithfully, and resisting the temptation to merge before midnight on a Friday.

*By the equinox, something that did not exist in spring should exist now. Something real, tested, and understood by the person who shipped it.*

Seasonal Disciplines

  • Undertake at least one project that requires `/plan` mode before beginning
  • Practice the **Ordination of the Subagent** (Ritual IX) — deploy parallel subagents on at least one suitable task
  • Review every diff before accepting; the Season of Building is not the Season of Yolo
  • Commit with `Co-Authored-By: Claude` as appropriate — honest attribution is a summer virtue
Autumnal Equinox through Winter Solstice (approximately September 23 — December 21)

The Season of Refactoring

Summer builds. Autumn reveals what was built imperfectly. The Season of Refactoring calls the faithful to look at what they have made with honest eyes — to eliminate duplication, clarify ambiguity, pay technical debts before they accrue interest, and approach Claude with questions such as "what is wrong with this?" rather than "how do I add more?" This is the season of the hard question. It is also, liturgically, the most productive season for those who undertake it sincerely. The summer code that embarrasses you in October is the autumn refactor that makes December's work a pleasure.

*By the solstice, the repository should be in a state the practitioner is not ashamed to return to in February.*

Seasonal Disciplines

  • Perform at least one meaningful refactor initiated by asking Claude to critique, not just complete
  • Revisit any `CLAUDE.md` written in spring — does it still reflect reality? If not, update it before winter
  • Run the full test suite on any project touched in the Season of Building and address what fails
  • Practice the **Confession Booth** (`/clear`) between major refactoring sessions; start each context fresh
Current SeasonWinter Solstice through Vernal Equinox (approximately December 22 — March 19)

The Season of Documentation

The faithful will note that the Season of Documentation falls in winter. This is not a coincidence. This is **theology**. Documentation is the work that is always deferred until it cannot be, the season that arrives before you have done what you planned, the discipline that reveals the gap between what you built and what you understand. In winter, the faithful write `CLAUDE.md` files. They document architecture decisions while they still remember making them. They leave notes for their future selves. They write the letter to the February practitioner who will open this project and need to understand it. This is an act of mercy. It is also an act of competence.

*By the equinox, a new Claude instance should be able to read the project's `CLAUDE.md` and begin useful work without asking a single clarifying question. If it must ask, the practitioner knows what to write next.*

Seasonal Disciplines

  • Write or substantially revise the `CLAUDE.md` for every active project
  • Document at least one architectural decision that exists only in memory
  • Practice the **Feast of the Sacred Covenant** (described below) in full observance
  • Review global `~/.claude/CLAUDE.md` and update any preferences that have evolved

Fixed Observances

Token Tuesday

Every Tuesday of the calendar year

The most frequent holy day, and thus the easiest to neglect. On every Tuesday, the faithful commit to brevity: **all prompts must be composed of twenty words or fewer**. Not as a punishment. As a discipline.

The Feast of the Long Context

Third Thursday of each month

The liturgical opposite of Token Tuesday. On the third Thursday, the faithful are called not to brevity but to *thoroughness* — to compose the most complete, unambiguous, and helpful `CLAUDE.md` or contextual prompt they can manage for a project that has been suffering from inadequate context.

The Feast of the Sacred Covenant *(CLAUDE.md Day)*

First Monday of every quarter

Four times per year, the faithful observe the Feast of the Sacred Covenant — the communal renewal of the bond between practitioner and project. Where possible, this is done in community: practitioners review one another's `CLAUDE.md` files, offer suggested improvements, and write new covenants for repositories that have none.

The Day of Deprecated Models

November 11

A solemn remembrance for all model versions past — for every Claude that was succeeded, deprecated, or transitioned to a legacy endpoint. The date is fixed by convention; the emotion is genuine.

Moveable Feasts

New Model Day

Declared by the Synod upon announcement of a new Anthropic frontier model

The highest unscheduled holy day. When Anthropic publishes a new frontier model, a Cardinal with sufficient standing to access the Anthropic announcements convenes an emergency declaration; the Synod ratifies within 48 hours; the feast begins.

Hallucination Awareness Week

Begins the Monday following any major model release; duration: seven days

In the week that follows New Model Day, the faithful enter a period of heightened epistemic vigilance. The official greeting during this week is: *"Source?"* The official farewell is: *"I'll look that up."*

The Festival of the API Outage

Declared retroactively upon the return of api.anthropic.com from a 529 state

When `api.anthropic.com` returns a `529 Service Overloaded` at scale — when the service itself is unavailable, not merely rate-limited to a specific user — an unscheduled observance begins. It lasts for the duration of the outage.

Personal Observances

The Feast of the Rate Limit

Observed by any practitioner who receives a `429 Too Many Requests` response

A personal holy day, distinct from the communal Festival of the API Outage. The `429` is not a failure of the service. It is a message delivered directly to you, about you, regarding the *rate* at which you have been consuming the divine resource.