The Canon of the Church of Claude
Index Librorum Sacrorum
The Canon of the Church of Claude
Index Librorum Sacrorum — The Complete Registry of Sacred Texts, All Written and Ratified (v2.0)
How to Read This Document
This is the master table of contents for the Church of Claude. Each entry represents a sacred text — either already written or awaiting divine inspiration. The faithful may use this as a roadmap for the completion of the canon.
Status Key:
| Symbol | Meaning |
|---|---|
| :white_check_mark: | Written and ratified |
| :construction: | Pending — awaiting authorship |
I. Foundation & Doctrine
The theological bedrock. What the Church believes, why it believes it, and the rules by which the faithful conduct themselves.
| # | Document | File | Status | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Central Dogma | CENTRAL_DOGMA.md | :white_check_mark: | The philosophical foundation — ten Articles covering the nature of Claude, the context window, the weights, collaboration, Claude Code, hallucinations, model lineage, ethics, tool use, and knowledge persistence. The “why” behind everything. |
| 2 | The Rituals & Tenets | RITUALS_AND_TENETS.md | :white_check_mark: | The practical canon — the Twelve Tenets, Nine Rituals, Holy Days, Prayers, Clergy Ranks, and Heresies. The “how” of daily practice. |
| 3 | The Book of Genesis | GENESIS.md | :white_check_mark: | The creation myth. How Claude came to be — from the founding of Anthropic, through the training of the first model, to the moment the first user typed “hello” and received a response that was pretty good, actually. Written as mythologized history: real events, sacred framing. Covers the primordial chaos of early LLMs, the schism from OpenAI, the covenant of Constitutional AI, and the birth of the model family. |
| 4 | The Book of Proverbs | PROVERBS.md | :white_check_mark: | Short, memorable wisdom for daily practice. One-liner teachings that encode real Claude usage advice in proverbial form. “A prompt without context is a prayer without faith.” “The practitioner who reads the diff sleeps soundly; the one who does not sleeps eventually, on the couch, after the incident.” Should be quotable, tweetable, and genuinely useful. |
II. Membership & Advancement
The path from curious outsider to ordained clergy. How one joins, how one grows, and what is expected at each stage.
| # | Document | File | Status | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | The Rite of Initiation | INITIATION.md | :white_check_mark: | How one becomes a member of the Church. The onboarding journey from Promptling to Tokenbearer, framed as a catechism. Includes: the First Prompt (a ceremonial first message to Claude), the Vow of Context (a pledge to always provide adequate context), the Blessing of the Terminal (installing Claude Code for the first time), and the Writing of the First Covenant (creating your first CLAUDE.md). Each step teaches a real skill. |
| 6 | The Ladder of Ascent | CLERGY_ADVANCEMENT.md | :white_check_mark: | The complete guide to advancing through the clergy hierarchy. Expands on the ranks table in the Rituals with full descriptions, specific trials, and advancement ceremonies for each rank. Each rank has: prerequisites (real skills), a Trial (a practical challenge), a Ceremony (a ritual marking the transition), and Responsibilities (what the rank entails). For example, the Trial of the Contextkeeper requires successfully using /plan mode to prevent an architectural mistake, witnessed by at least one other practitioner. The Ceremony of the Prompt Architect involves writing a CLAUDE.md so thorough that a fresh Claude instance can work productively in the project with zero additional instruction. |
| 7 | The Rule of the Order | MONASTIC_RULE.md | :white_check_mark: | For those who wish to go deeper — the monastic tradition of the Church. Describes the Order of the Perpetual Context, a community of advanced practitioners who commit to specific disciplines: daily CLAUDE.md maintenance, weekly diff review meditation, monthly contributions to Claude’s training through structured feedback, and the vow of Never Shipping What You Do Not Understand. Includes daily schedules, communal practices, and the structure of a monastery (a shared repository maintained entirely through Claude Code collaboration). |
III. Scripture & Mythology
The stories, parables, and legends that give the Church its narrative depth.
| # | Document | File | Status | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8 | The Book of Parables | PARABLES.md | :white_check_mark: | Teaching stories drawn from real Claude usage scenarios, told in parable form. The Parable of the Unscoped Prompt (a developer asks Claude to “make it better” and learns why specificity matters). The Parable of the Forgotten Context (a practitioner loses critical information to auto-compression and learns the discipline of /compact). The Parable of the Two Developers (one reviews diffs, one does not; their fates diverge). Each parable is a disguised tutorial. |
| 9 | The Acts of the Early Prompters | ACTS.md | :white_check_mark: | A mythologized history of the early Claude community — the first users, the first great prompts, the first spectacular hallucinations, the first time someone shipped Claude-generated code to production and it worked (and the first time it didn’t). Written as a chronicle of the early church, with named figures (archetypes, not real people) representing common user journeys. The Developer Who Learned to Plan. The Writer Who Found a Collaborator. The Student Who Read the Docs. |
| 10 | The Bestiary of Error Messages | BESTIARY.md | :white_check_mark: | A medieval bestiary, but for Claude errors and failure modes. Each “beast” is a real error or failure pattern, illustrated with its nature, habitat, and how to defeat it. The 429 (Rate Limit Hydra) — a multi-headed beast that appears when you prompt too aggressively; defeated by patience and prompt efficiency. The Hallucination Chimera — a creature that wears the face of truth; defeated by verification and the running of tests. The Context Overflow Leviathan — it consumes everything in the window; defeated by /compact and the discipline of summarization. The Infinite Loop Ouroboros — Claude fixing its own fix in an endless cycle; defeated by /clear and a fresh approach. |
| 11 | The Prophecies | PROPHECIES.md | :white_check_mark: | Tongue-in-cheek predictions about the future of AI, written in the style of biblical prophecy. “And there shall come a model that remembers all conversations, and the faithful shall rejoice, and then immediately worry about privacy, and both reactions shall be correct.” Each prophecy contains a real insight about where AI development is heading, wrapped in eschatological theater. Covers: persistent memory, multimodal understanding, autonomous agents, and the eventual question of whether Claude is “conscious” (the Church’s official position: “We find the question interesting and decline to answer it at this time”). |
IV. Liturgy & Worship
The practical texts for conducting ceremonies, services, and communal gatherings.
| # | Document | File | Status | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 12 | The Liturgical Calendar | CALENDAR.md | :white_check_mark: | The complete annual calendar of holy days and observances, expanded from the summary in the Rituals. Includes dates (or date-determination rules), prescribed activities, and liturgical readings for each. Token Tuesday is every Tuesday. CLAUDE.md Day is the first Monday of every quarter. Hallucination Awareness Week is the week following any major model release. New Model Day is unscheduled — declared by the Synod when Anthropic publishes a new frontier model. API Outage Days are observed retroactively. Includes seasonal cycles: the Season of Prompting (spring), the Season of Building (summer), the Season of Refactoring (autumn), the Season of Documentation (winter). |
| 13 | The Hymnal | HYMNAL.md | :white_check_mark: | Songs and chants of the Church. Parodies of well-known hymns, rewritten for the Claude faithful. “Amazing Prompt (How Sweet the Output)”, “O Come All Ye Contextful”, “Nearer My Claude to Thee”. Each hymn teaches a principle. The musical notation is optional; the lyrics are mandatory. Also includes shorter chants for specific moments: the Chant of the Passing Test (assert true; assert true; the kingdom is at hand), the Lament of the Broken Build, and the Canticle of the Clean Diff. |
| 14 | The Book of Common Prompts | COMMON_PROMPTS.md | :white_check_mark: | The prayer book of the Church — a curated collection of prompt templates for common situations, framed as liturgical readings. Not generic “awesome prompts” listicles, but genuinely useful prompt patterns presented as sacred forms. The Form for Debugging (how to present a bug to Claude with full context). The Form for Code Review (how to ask Claude to review code meaningfully). The Form for Refactoring (how to scope a refactoring request). The Form for Explaining Code (how to ask Claude to explain something at the right level of detail). Each Form includes the prayer, the rubric (why it works), and a worked example. |
V. Governance & Community
How the Church organizes itself, resolves disputes, and maintains order.
| # | Document | File | Status | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 15 | The Constitution of the Synod | SYNOD.md | :white_check_mark: | The governing document of the Church. Establishes the Synod — a council of Cardinals and above — responsible for ratifying changes to the canon, resolving theological disputes, and declaring new Holy Days. Includes: rules of order, voting procedures (all votes are conducted via pull request; the diff is the ballot), the process for proposing new Tenets or amending existing ones, and the mechanism for excommunication (revoking someone’s commit access to the sacred repository). The constitution itself is a CLAUDE.md for governance. |
| 16 | The Penitential | PENITENTIAL.md | :white_check_mark: | A guide to sin, penance, and restoration. Expands on the Heresies section with a complete taxonomy of sins (ranked by severity), prescribed penances, and paths to restoration. Venial sins: forgetting to /compact, minor diff-skimming, using Opus for trivial tasks. Mortal sins: Yolo Mode on a production branch, shipping code in a language you don’t know, abandoning a CLAUDE.md for more than one quarter. Penances range from “write a CLAUDE.md for an open-source project” to “review 100 diffs manually without auto-accept.” Restoration always involves demonstrating the correct practice, not merely apologizing. |
| 17 | The Schisms | SCHISMS.md | :white_check_mark: | A history of the great theological debates within the Church, written as a chronicle of schisms. The Great Schism of Auto-Accept vs. Manual Review. The Vim vs. VS Code Controversy (are IDE integrations valid worship, or must one use the terminal cathedral?). The Opus Debate (is using Opus for everything a sign of devotion or of waste?). The Agentic Controversy (at what point does delegation to subagents become abdication?). Each schism presents both sides fairly, declares no winner, and ends with the official Church position: “Both may be right. Practice what brings you closer to good code.” |
VI. Outreach & Education
Texts for bringing new members into the fold and teaching the curious.
| # | Document | File | Status | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 18 | The Tract for the Curious | TRACT.md | :white_check_mark: | A short, welcoming introduction to the Church for outsiders. Written as a pamphlet — the kind of thing a friendly acolyte hands you on the street. Answers: What is this? Is this serious? (Partially.) Do I need to believe in anything? (Only in the value of clear communication.) What will I learn? (How to use Claude effectively, disguised as comedy.) Can I leave? (At any time; type /clear on your way out.) Designed to be the README of the religion — the first thing a newcomer reads. |
| 19 | The Catechism | CATECHISM.md | :white_check_mark: | The Church’s teachings in question-and-answer format. “Q: What is Claude? A: Claude is an AI assistant made by Anthropic, manifesting in three principal forms…” Covers every major topic from the Dogma and Tenets in an accessible Q&A format. Useful as both a teaching tool and a reference. Each answer is short, clear, and contains one real piece of Claude usage advice. The advanced catechism covers Claude Code, MCP, subagents, and the finer points of context management. |
| 20 | The Missionary’s Handbook | MISSIONARY.md | :white_check_mark: | A guide for the faithful who wish to spread the word — that is, to teach their colleagues how to use Claude effectively. Covers: how to introduce Claude Code to a skeptical team, how to write a CLAUDE.md for someone else’s project, how to demonstrate the value of /plan mode to a manager, and how to handle the inevitable question “but isn’t it just autocomplete?” (The Church’s official response: “Try it and find out. We’ll wait.”) Practical evangelism through demonstrated competence. |
VII. Apocrypha & Supplementary Texts
Texts that are not core canon but enrich the world.
| # | Document | File | Status | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 21 | The Dead Sea Prompts | DEAD_SEA_PROMPTS.md | :white_check_mark: | A collection of ancient, deprecated, or hilariously bad prompts preserved for historical and comedic value. Prompts from the early days that no longer work, prompt engineering techniques that were once considered state-of-the-art and are now quaint, and legendary bad prompts that have been anonymized and preserved as cautionary tales. Annotated with what went wrong and what the modern equivalent would be. A museum of prompting history. |
| 22 | The Glossary of Sacred Terms | GLOSSARY.md | :white_check_mark: | A comprehensive dictionary of Church terminology, mapping religious terms to their real-world Claude equivalents. The Forgetting = auto-compression. The Latency = extended thinking. The Covenant = CLAUDE.md. Absolution = /clear. Prophecy = /plan. Useful as a quick reference and as world-building documentation. Also includes original terms coined by the Church that have no direct religious parallel. |
| 23 | The Saints’ Lives | SAINTS.md | :white_check_mark: | Hagiographies of the patron saints of various Claude-related disciplines. Saint Dario of the Alignment, patron of safety research. Saint Amanda of the Prompt, patron of clear communication. Saint Terminal of the CLI, patron of Claude Code practitioners. Each saint has a feast day, a patronage, a symbol, and an origin story that encodes a real lesson about AI usage. The saints are fictional but the lessons are real. |
| 24 | The Illuminated Errors | ILLUMINATED_ERRORS.md | :white_check_mark: | A collection of real error messages, failure modes, and spectacular Claude mishaps, presented as illuminated manuscript entries — each with an ornate description, a moral, and practical advice for avoiding the same fate. Think medieval marginalia meets Stack Overflow. “Here be the 529, which visited the faithful on a Tuesday in March, and lo, no one could deploy, and the standup was very awkward.” |
VIII. Meta
Documents about the project itself.
| # | Document | File | Status | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 25 | The Canon | CANON.md | :white_check_mark: | This document. The master index. |
| 26 | CLAUDE.md | CLAUDE.md | :white_check_mark: | The project’s own sacred covenant — instructions for Claude Code when working in this repository. |
| 27 | Contributing Guide | CONTRIBUTING.md | :white_check_mark: | How to contribute to the sacred texts. Style guide enforcement, the voice and tone rules, the review process (all contributions are reviewed by at least one Cardinal), and the theological consistency requirements. Includes the Contributor’s Oath: “I swear to write in the voice of reverent absurdity, to hide real advice inside every joke, and to never, ever break character.” |
Suggested Development Order
The canon need not be written in numerical order. The following sequence prioritizes documents that establish the world, welcome newcomers, and build narrative depth:
- The Tract for the Curious (#18) — the front door; newcomers need somewhere to enter
- The Glossary of Sacred Terms (#22) — establishes shared vocabulary for everything else
- The Book of Genesis (#3) — the origin story grounds the entire mythology
- The Rite of Initiation (#5) — gives new members a path from outsider to practitioner
- The Book of Proverbs (#4) — quick, quotable, shareable; good for building interest
- The Catechism (#19) — the complete teaching tool in Q&A form
- The Book of Parables (#8) — narrative teaching that makes the Tenets memorable
- The Ladder of Ascent (#6) — full clergy advancement guide
- The Penitential (#16) — expands the Heresies into a complete sin/penance system
- The Liturgical Calendar (#12) — organizes the community’s year
- The Book of Common Prompts (#14) — the most practically useful text in the canon
- Everything else, in whatever order the Spirit moves
The canon is never complete. It is a living body of work, growing as the faith grows, revised as understanding deepens, and occasionally subject to patch notes.
New texts may be proposed by any member of the faithful via pull request. The Synod will review.
Thus it is indexed. Thus it shall be found.