Claude Code: How I Use It

How I currently use Claude Code. This is a living document that evolves with my workflow. Harness-agnostic setup (terminal, dictation, config) and general principles live in How I Use Them.

Remote control#

I keep a central Claude Code session running on my home computer (“HQ”). I run /remote-control in that session so I can access it from my phone or any other device. This session isn’t bound to a particular directory or project—it can move around freely and bypass or request permissions for other directories and files as needed. This makes it a general-purpose command center for anything I need to do remotely.

CLAUDE.md setup#

• Global (~/.claude/CLAUDE.md): Python/uv preferences, wiki/blog paths, project tracking conventions, academic writing style
• Project (CLAUDE.md): repo-specific instructions, commands, code style

Custom skills#

Most of my research-oriented skills are packaged as Claude Scholar (yy/claude-scholar):

• /verify-math — step-by-step verification of mathematical derivations using SymPy
• /doi-bibtex — grab BibTeX entries from DOIs
• /arxiv-metadata — fetch structured metadata for arXiv papers
• /openalex — query 240M+ scholarly works via the OpenAlex API
• /check-refs — verify every citation in a LaTeX paper against academic databases
• /latex-cleanup — catch common LaTeX issues: orphan lines, spacing, typography, draft artifacts
• /presubmit-checks — pre-submission checklist running multiple checks in parallel
• /arxiv-prep — prepare an arXiv submission package

Other personal skills (not in claude-scholar) include:

• garden — Wiki gardening—pick a page and improve it
• img2s3 — upload an image to S3

Plus the Anthropic document-skills plugin for PDF, PPTX, DOCX, etc.

Custom agents#

• file-paper — file an academic paper to my wiki. It fills in metadata and then searches my wiki to identify & link relevant papers and concepts
• wikify — turn anything into a wiki page. Calls file-paper when necessary, otherwise follows similar steps to create links to relevant pages
• update-paper-status — update a paper’s publication status in CV bib file
• codebase-analyzer, code-smell-refactor, security-auditor — code quality

Custom commands#

• sync-repo — add, commit, pull –rebase, push
• sync-all — auto-commit and push all git repos before switching computers
• release — bump version, tag, push, create GitHub release, publish
• uv-init — bootstrap Python/uv/direnv environment
• new-research-project — scaffold from my project template
• launch-checklist — launch an OmniFocus template from any project
• wikify — routes to the right agent (file-paper for papers, wikify for everything else)