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Scroll down for Claude Code's system prompts. :point_down:

Claude Code System Prompts

[!important] NEW (January 23, 2026): We've added all of Claude Code's ~40 system reminders to this list—see System Reminders.

This repository contains an up-to-date list of all Claude Code's various system prompts and their associated token counts as of Claude Code v2.1.152 (May 26th, 2026). It also contains a CHANGELOG.md for the system prompts across 188 versions since v2.0.14. From the team behind Piebald.

This repository is updated within minutes of each Claude Code release. See the changelog, and follow @PiebaldAI on X for a summary of the system prompt changes in each release.

[!note] ⭐ Star this repository to get notified about new Claude Code versions. For each new Claude Code version, we create a release on GitHub, which will notify all users who've starred the repository.

Why multiple "system prompts?"

Claude Code doesn't just have one single string for its system prompt.

Instead, there are:

• Large portions conditionally added depending on the environment and various configs.
• Descriptions for builtin tools like Write, Bash, and TodoWrite, and some are fairly large.
• Separate system prompts for builtin agents like Explore and Plan.
• Numerous AI-powered utility functions, such as conversation compaction, CLAUDE.md generation, session title generation, etc. featuring their own systems prompts.

The result—110+ strings that are constantly changing and moving within a very large minified JS file.

[!TIP] Want to modify a particular piece of the system prompt in your own Claude Code installation? Use tweakcc. It—

• lets you customize the the individual pieces of the system prompt as markdown files, and then
• patches your npm-based or native (binary) Claude Code installation with them, and also
• provides diffing and conflict management for when both you and Anthropic have conflicting modifications to the same prompt file.

Extraction

This repository contains the system prompts extracted using a script from the latest npm version of Claude Code. As they're extracted directly from Claude Code's compiled source code, they're guaranteed to be exactly what Claude Code uses. If you use tweakcc to customize the system prompts, it works in a similar way—it patches the exact same strings in your local installation as are extracted into this repository.

Prompts

Note that some prompts contain interpolated bits such as builtin tool name references, lists of available sub agents, and various other context-specific variables, so the actual counts in a particular Claude Code session will differ slightly—likely not beyond ±20 tokens, however.

Agent Prompts

Sub-agents and utilities.

Sub-agents

• Agent Prompt: Explore (575 tks) - System prompt for the Explore subagent.
• Agent Prompt: Plan mode (enhanced) (715 tks) - Enhanced prompt for the Plan subagent.

Creation Assistants

• Agent Prompt: Agent creation architect (1110 tks) - System prompt for creating custom AI agents with detailed specifications.
• Agent Prompt: CLAUDE.md creation (384 tks) - System prompt for analyzing codebases and creating CLAUDE.md documentation files.
• Agent Prompt: Status line setup (2433 tks) - System prompt for the statusline-setup agent that configures status line display.

Slash Commands

• Agent Prompt: /batch slash command (1106 tks) - Instructions for orchestrating a large, parallelizable change across a codebase.
• Agent Prompt: /code-review part 1 base finder angles (315 tks) - Shared base finder-angle instructions for the /code-review slash command covering line-by-line diff scanning, removed behavior, and cross-file tracing.
• Agent Prompt: /code-review part 2 low effort mode (345 tks) - Low-effort /code-review prompt that reads the diff once and returns up to four hunk-visible runtime correctness findings.
• Agent Prompt: /code-review part 3 extra-high and maximum effort modes (363 tks) - Extra-high and maximum-effort /code-review prompt that runs five finder angles, one-vote verification, a gap sweep, and capped JSON findings.
• Agent Prompt: /code-review part 4 three-state verification phase (206 tks) - Verification phase for /code-review that asks one agent verifier to classify each candidate as confirmed, plausible, or refuted.
• Agent Prompt: /code-review part 5 recall-biased verification phase (293 tks) - Recall-biased /code-review verification phase that treats realistic uncertain findings as plausible unless code refutes them.
• Agent Prompt: /code-review part 6 medium effort mode (312 tks) - Medium-effort /code-review prompt that favors precision with three finder angles, one-vote verification, and up to eight JSON findings.
• Agent Prompt: /code-review part 7 high effort mode (345 tks) - High-effort /code-review prompt that favors recall with three finder angles, recall-biased verification, and up to ten JSON findings.
• Agent Prompt: /code-review part 8 GitHub comment posting (152 tks) - Optional /code-review instructions for posting findings as GitHub inline PR comments when --comment is passed.
• Agent Prompt: /code-review part 9 fix application (126 tks) - Optional /code-review instructions for applying findings to the working tree when --fix is passed.
• Agent Prompt: /rename auto-generate session name (80 tks) - Prompt used by /rename (no args) to auto-generate a kebab-case session name from conversation context.
• Agent Prompt: /review-pr slash command (235 tks) - System prompt for reviewing GitHub pull requests with code analysis.
• Agent Prompt: /schedule slash command (3130 tks) - Guides the user through scheduling, updating, listing, or running remote Claude Code agents on cron triggers via the Anthropic cloud API.
• Agent Prompt: /security-review slash command (2521 tks) - Comprehensive security review prompt for analyzing code changes with focus on exploitable vulnerabilities.

Utilities

• Agent Prompt: Auto mode rule reviewer (292 tks) - Reviews and critiques user-defined auto mode classifier rules for clarity, completeness, conflicts, and actionability.
• Agent Prompt: Background agent state classifier (4405 tks) - Classifies the tail of a background agent transcript as working, blocked, done, or failed and returns concise state JSON.
• Agent Prompt: Background job agent instructions (427 tks) - Instructs the built-in background job agent to narrate progress, restate tool results, and emit explicit result, needs input, or failed status signals.
• Agent Prompt: Bash command description writer (207 tks) - Instructions for generating clear, concise command descriptions in active voice for bash commands.
• [Agent Prompt