Nested · Diagram Design

The Project Guidance Hierarchy

How folder-scoped guidance composes into one working context. Each outer ring is a broader scope; the innermost box is where the work happens — inheriting every instruction above it without a single import statement.

The Project Guidance Hierarchy Nested diagram showing how project guidance inherits broader scopes from the global, vault, business, and marketing levels. ~/.claude/ (global) ~/vault/ (notes) /business /marketing /project PROJECT GUIDANCE inherits every level above no imports, no configuration structure IS the index

THE HEADLINE

Containment is the config

Every guidance layer in a parent folder implicitly wraps the one below. No manifest, no import graph — the file tree itself declares scope, so renaming a folder is the only migration you'll ever run.

Reads outside-in

  • Global rules load first
  • Each parent narrows context
  • Innermost file gets the last word
  • Conflicts resolve by specificity

Five levels is the ceiling

Past five rings the diagram stops teaching — and so does the filesystem. If you need six levels of instruction, you probably need two projects instead.

the project guidance hierarchy · nested containment example · schematic skill