Wouldn't symlinking it be faster and use fewer tokens?

I did that but not necessarily.

When prompted to write to it, it will always try to write into the Claude.md and error out with that approach.. It eventually figures it out, but it's a ymmv situation I think

It also works more reliably. I've tested this quite a bit. Instructions in files referenced via CLAUDE.md are more likely to fall out of context or to be ignored. Raw project level CLAUDE.md instructions are the second most durable available as far as I know. I used to have a "well organized" hierarchy of rules and instructions. Collapsing all of that into CLAUDE.md + skills made things far more predictable and "as instructed".

Maybe I'm not up to speed but i deleted claude.md while testing weird opus 5 behaviors, it came back saying nothing was used in claude.md but rather storing context in memories.md in some .claude/projectname/memories folder in my user profile....

How is agents.md and different? Just a standard for other models? Is claude the lower standard now?

Everyone does. But I think you're missing the point. It's effectively a billboard in the root of your repo.

Sent from my iPhone.

it's been a standard practice on open source projects, right? CLAUDE.md only have one sentence "read ./AGENTS.md", lol.