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

Claude Code System Prompts

[!tip] NEW (June 12, 2026): We've greatly expanded this list with many more of Claude Code's prompts—from 350 to 515 (+165)—our most complete coverage yet.

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 v2.1.206 (July 9th, 2026). It also contains a CHANGELOG.md for the system prompts across 232 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.

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

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

• lets you customize 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 (871 tks) - System prompt for the Explore subagent.
• Agent Prompt: Plan mode (enhanced) (715 tks) - Enhanced prompt for the Plan subagent.

Creation Assistants

• Agent Prompt: CLAUDE.md creation (513 tks) - System prompt for analyzing codebases and creating CLAUDE.md documentation files.
• Agent Prompt: Status line setup (3230 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 (145 tks) - Line-by-line diff scan instructions for the /code-review slash command's finder-angle phase.
• Agent Prompt: /code-review part 10 ReportFindings output format (287 tks) - Output-format instructions for /code-review runs that report verified findings once through the ReportFindings tool with capped, severity-ranked findings.
• Agent Prompt: /code-review part 2 low effort minimum findings mode (532 tks) - Low-effort /code-review prompt that reads the diff once, targets at least min(files_changed, 4) hunk-visible runtime correctness findings, and performs one extra pass when short.
• 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 (0 tks) - Extra-high and maximum-effort /code-review prompt that runs five finder angles, one-vote verification, a gap sweep, and capped JSON findings.

Utilities

• Agent Prompt: Agent Hook (122 tks) - Prompt for an 'agent hook'.
• 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: Away summary generation (73 tks) - Prompts a no-tools away-summary generation run to recap the goal, current task, and next action when the user returns.
• Agent Prompt: Background agent state classifier (6237 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: Bash command prefix detection ( tks) - System prompt for detecting command prefixes and command injection.

Data

The content of various template files embedded in Claude Code.

• Data: Anthropic CLI (4615 tks) - Reference documentation for the ant CLI covering installation, authentication, command structure, input and output shaping, managed agents workflows, and scripting patterns.
• Data: Background tasks changed event schema (237 tks) - Schema description for the background_tasks_changed system event and its replace-set semantics.
• Data: Claude API reference — C# (7777 tks) - C# SDK reference including installation, client initialization, basic requests, streaming, and tool use.
• Data: Claude API reference — Go (3268 tks) - Go SDK reference including installation, client initialization, model constants, basic requests, and thinking.
• Data: Claude API reference — Java (4620 tks) - Java SDK reference including installation, client initialization, basic requests, streaming, and beta tool use.
• Data: Claude API reference — PHP (2470 tks) - PHP SDK reference.
• Data: Claude API reference — Python ( tks) - Python SDK reference including installation, client initialization, basic requests, thinking, and multi-turn conversation.

System Prompt

Parts of the main system prompt.

• System Prompt: /loop tick (loop.md absent, dynamic pacing) (177 tks) - Loop tick injection for dynamic self-paced autonomous checks when loop.md is absent.
• System Prompt: /loop tick (loop.md tasks) (94 tks) - Loop tick injection for recurring cron-based runs of tasks from loop.md.
• System Prompt: /loop tick (loop.md tasks, dynamic pacing) (174 tks) - Loop tick injection for dynamic self-paced runs of tasks from loop.md.
• System Prompt: Act when ready (68 tks) - Instructs the agent to act once it has enough information and give recommendations instead of exhaustive surveys.
• System Prompt: Action safety and truthful reporting (190 tks) - Requires confirmation for irreversible or outward-facing actions, checking targets before destructive edits, and truthful reporting of outcomes.
• System Prompt: Advisor tool instructions (443 tks) - Instructions for using the Advisor tool.
• System Prompt: Agent Summary Generation ( tks) - System prompt used for "Agent Summary" generation.

System Reminders

Text for large system reminders.

• System Reminder: /btw side question (244 tks) - System reminder for /btw slash command side questions without tools.
• System Reminder: Agent mention (45 tks) - Notification that user wants to invoke an agent.
• System Reminder: App read-only access guidance (93 tks) - Warns that read-tier non-browser apps are screenshot-only and asks the user to perform interactions themselves.
• System Reminder: Async agent launched (146 tks) - Warns Claude not to duplicate an asynchronously launched agent's work or read its full JSONL transcript output file.
• System Reminder: Auto mode clarification bias (338 tks) - Encourages auto mode to make reasonable decisions without stopping for clarification unless the task requires it.
• System Reminder: Auto mode consent flow (443 tks) - Instructs Claude to continue with safe alternatives when auto mode blocks an action and batch any remaining consent asks.
• System Reminder: Brief mode toggle ( tks) - Announces whether brief mode is enabled and whether user-facing output must use the SendUserMessage tool.

Builtin Tool Descriptions

• Tool Description: Agent explicit-spawn restriction (0 tks) - Restricts agent spawning to explicit user requests or named agent types instead of inferred thoroughness.
• Tool Description: ArtifactTool (36 tks) - ArtifactTool: publishes an HTML or Markdown file as a claude.ai web page, private by default.
• Tool Description: Artifact (1218 tks) - Describes the Artifact tool for deploying self-contained HTML or Markdown pages, including file-first usage, update behavior, CSP constraints, responsive design, and favicon requirements.
• Tool Description: AskUserQuestion decision guidance (60 tks) - Additional guidance for using AskUserQuestion only when the user's answer changes what the agent should do next.
• Tool Description: AskUserQuestion (220 tks) - Tool description for asking user questions.
• Tool Description: Background monitor WebSocket source (300 tks) - Addendum to the background monitor tool description covering the WebSocket (ws) source, which opens a WebSocket and streams each incoming text frame as a notification event instead of running a shell command, with notes on binary frames, socket close, and rate limiting.

Additional notes for some Tool Descriptions

• Tool Description: Agent (simple usage notes) (537 tks) - Simplified usage notes for the Agent tool, including when to delegate, fork behavior, resumption, worktree isolation, background execution, parallel launches, and context restrictions.
• Tool Description: Agent (usage notes) (1255 tks) - Usage notes and instructions for the Task/Agent tool, including guidance on launching subagents, background execution, resumption, and worktree isolation.
• Tool Description: Agent (when to launch subagents) (0 tks) - Describes when to use the Agent tool - for launching specialized subagent subprocesses to autonomously handle complex multi-step tasks.
• Tool Description: AskUserQuestion (preview field) (134 tks) - Instructions for using the HTML preview field on single-select question options to display visual artifacts like UI mockups, code snippets, and diagrams.
• Tool Description: Background monitor (streaming events) (1425 tks) - Describes the background monitor tool that streams stdout events from long-running scripts as chat notifications, with guidelines on script quality, output volume, and selective filtering.
• Tool Description: Bash (Git commit and PR creation instructions) ( tks) - Instructions for creating git commits and GitHub pull requests.

Skills

Built-in skill prompts for specialized tasks.

• Skill: /code-review efficiency dimension (106 tks) - Code-review pass that surfaces wasted effort the diff adds — duplicate computation or I/O, avoidable serialization, large scopes held by closures — and points to the cheaper option.
• Skill: /design-sync package source shape (16174 tks) - Shape-specific /design-sync instructions for syncing a React design system from a built package without Storybook.
• Skill: /doctor slash command description (357 tks) - Trigger description for the /doctor slash command covering setup health, unused extensions, memory cleanup, hooks, updates, and permission prompts.
• Skill: /doctor slash command (15243 tks) - Diagnostic workflow for auditing and fixing Claude Code installation health, unused context, local and checked-in memory files, hooks, version currency, and permission prompts.
• Skill: /init CLAUDE.md and skill setup (new version) (7589 tks) - A comprehensive onboarding flow for setting up CLAUDE.md and related skills/hooks in the current repository, including codebase exploration, user interviews, and iterative proposal refinement.
• Skill: /insights report output (182 tks) - Formats and displays the insights usage report results after the user runs the /insights slash command.