Redundant With Tooling¶
Rule ID: content-redundant-with-tooling
Detect instructions that duplicate .editorconfig, ESLint, Prettier, or tsconfig settings
| Severity | warning (auto) |
| Autofix | llm |
| Since | v0.7.0 |
Research Basis¶
Detects instructions that duplicate what .editorconfig, ESLint, Prettier, or tsconfig already enforce.
When CLAUDE.md says "use 2-space indentation" and .editorconfig already
specifies indent_size = 2, the instruction is redundant. Worse, it creates
configuration drift risk: if someone updates .editorconfig to 4 spaces but
forgets the CLAUDE.md, the model receives contradictory signals.
Tooling enforcement is deterministic — it runs every time, without fail. Instruction-file enforcement is probabilistic — the model follows it most of the time, but not always. Restating deterministic rules as probabilistic instructions wastes context tokens and adds no reliability.
References:
- Levy, Jacoby & Goldberg, Same Task, More Tokens — Every redundant instruction consumes context budget
- Anthropic: Effective Context Engineering — "One of the most common failure modes we see is bloated tool sets" — applies equally to bloated instructions
- Dotzlaw: Claude Code Hooks — "CLAUDE.md instructions are advisory… Hooks are enforcement"