“House rules” works better than “RULES” in CLAUDE.md anyone else seeing this?

Small thing, but it’s held up across enough sessions that I want to see if it’s just me.

My CLAUDE.md used to look like this:

## STRICT RULES — MUST FOLLOW
 - We run tests before committing.
 - This repo uses pnpm. Don't reach for npm.
 - Prefer editing an existing file over creating a new one.

Rules got followed early in a session and quietly drifted by the time the context filled up. The usual fix everyone suggests is more caps, more NEVER/ALWAYS, more repetition. That didn’t do much for me. Then I changed the heading to this:

## House rules
 - We run tests before committing.
 - This repo uses pnpm. Don't reach for npm.
 - Prefer editing an existing file over creating a new one.

Same content. Better adherence, and it stuck further into long sessions.

My guess at why and this is a guess, not a claim:

“STRICT RULES MUST FOLLOW” is boilerplate the model has seen in a million half-broken prompts, so it carries very little signal. “House rules” reads as norms of a shared space you’re working in rather than a compliance block bolted on top. Switching from imperatives to “we/this repo” phrasing probably matters as much as the heading itself. Caveats, because I know someone will ask: this is anecdotal. I didn’t run a controlled eval, I changed the phrasing at the same time as the heading, and I can’t rule out that I just got a good week.

So,has anyone else tested framing like this? Curious whether “house rules” / “team conventions” / “how we work here” beats “RULES” for you, or whether I’m pattern-matching on noise.