Your Brain Just Got Its Physical
11 Fable seats audited the whole KAIRO brain against Anthropic's 6 new context rules, then 3 breaker seats tried to tear the findings apart. Report only. Nothing was changed.
The short version: the video is right and your instinct is right. Every KAIRO session burns about 42,500 tokens before your first word. Most of that is one file: STATE.md, which is 81 percent old diary. Your "mostly blank Claude that loads per project" idea is about 70 percent already built. We do not need a rebuild. We need a diet, a router, and one new trick.
Listen Instead
3 minute audio version of this page.
The Weight You Carry Every Session
For scale: Anthropic cut 80 percent of Claude Code's own system prompt for Opus 5 and Fable 5 and lost nothing on their tests. Your setup runs the opposite way today.
Scoreboard: The 6 New Rules
| Rule (then to now) | You | Worst spot |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Rules to judgement | FLAG | Triple order to read 90KB STATE.md in full, every session, any task |
| 2. Examples to interfaces | FLAG | 52 skill descriptions = 17.7KB riding every session |
| 3. Progressive disclosure | FLAG | STATE.md diary + 37KB master file always on |
| 4. One home per rule | FLAG | Same laws restated 2 to 4 places, some drifted apart |
| 5. Memory out of CLAUDE.md | FLAG | Scar stories and quotes ride the always-on file |
| 6. Rich references | FLAG | A client design file still preaches a dead brand's colors |
64 findingsverified by 3 breaker seats12 killed as unsafe
The 12 killed findings all wanted to soften safety, approval, or verification rules. The breakers proved your paranoid rules are paranoid for documented reasons. They stay.
Live Contradictions (fix these first)
- Teacher mode zombie. A memory file still orders teacher mode. The master retired it Aug 3 with a do-not-restore order. Two files, opposite orders.
- Dead pointer. Home index points to a master section name that no longer exists.
- Stale path line. Charter still says Cowork links resolve to Documents. All 6 links prove ~/Claude.
- Two date formats. Two rule files mandate two different official date forms. Every new doc fails one gate or the other.
- Font civil war. Three design skills hardcode fonts the other skills ban by name.
- Dead brand walking. One client's design file locks the old palette as "canonical" while the client folder says that brand is dead. Risk for the next ad batch under the new brand. Details in the local report.
- Law aimed at a retired model. FABLE ROUTING LAW binds "Opus any 4.x". You run Opus 5 and Fable 5. Needs one dated line from you.
The Plan, Low Level
Fix the 7 contradictions 30 min
Small dated edits. You see every diff before it lands. Nothing gets deleted, only corrected.
Story-ectomy biggest win
Every rule keeps its text. The war stories behind the rules move to mistakes.md, leaving a one-line dated pointer. STATE.md diary drops from 14 days to 2 in the file, full diary moves to a side file, and the size cap gets fixed so it cannot balloon again. Wins back about 21,000 tokens every single session.
Router build the one new trick
Master file drops from 37KB to about a 12KB core. Browser rules, tool docs, and delivery rules move to small files that load only when needed. The new trick: hooks that force-load the right rule file the moment its topic comes up, so a moved rule can never be forgotten. Safety rules never move.
Amnesia fresh eyes your idea, adopted
A blank Claude audits the brain monthly. Two passes: first it judges cold, then it re-judges after reading the scar ledger. Three locks before anything changes: a loaded Fable cross-checks it, you see exact diffs, you approve each one. Run it attended, never headless.
Measure it proof
One instrumented session before and after. The token math above comes from file sizes; this makes it a real bill.
What I Need From You
Three decisions, nothing else is blocked
- Green-light Phase 0 and 1? Diffs shown before every edit.
- FABLE ROUTING LAW on Opus 5: does it bind the new models or retire with 4.x? One dated line from you settles it.
- First amnesia audit: run it now or after the diet? (Now catches more; after is cleaner.)
What The Video Said
Thariq, an Anthropic engineer, published the new context rules for Claude 5 models. Big models earn trust: fewer hard rules, more judgement. Your CLAUDE.md should be a thin router to a tree of files, not an encyclopedia. Facts about you belong in memory, not guidance files. HTML pages beat markdown as references. Jay's doctor-plus skill checks a workspace against those 6 rules; that is exactly what ran here, at fleet scale.
Honest Gaps
Sampled, not census: 8 of 52 skill bodies read in full, 2 of ~130 memory topic files, 3 of 25 hook scripts deep-read. No amnesia session was executed yet, so its leak status on the new binary stays unverified until the probe runs. Token savings are file-size math until Phase 4 measures the real bill. Full findings JSON and denominators live in the audit folder.
Source folder: audit 2026-08-05-doctor-plus-audit in the brain