claude-md-tester

Claude-MD-Tester

Swap ~/.claude/CLAUDE.md for test configs via symlink, with terminal-only restore that does not depend on the Claude harness.

Why

You want to try weird, joke, or character-heavy CLAUDE.md configs without risking your real one. Naive approaches (rename the file, write a new one in place) are fragile: a partial failure can leave you with no real CLAUDE.md, and a hostile test config can instruct Claude to refuse to restore it.

This plugin uses a symlink swap plus terminal-only recovery scripts so the harness is never in the recovery path. If the test config tells Claude to do nothing but recite a UUID, you still recover by running one shell command.

Layout

• configs/ — the library of test CLAUDE.md files
• bin/activate.sh <name> — swap CLAUDE.md for configs/<name>.md (terminal only)
• bin/restore.sh — restore the real CLAUDE.md, idempotent (terminal only)
• bin/status.sh — report current state
• skills/safety-check/ — plugin skill that walks the user through the swap without executing it

Usage

# see what's currently active
~/repos/github/my-repos/Claude-MD-Tester/bin/status.sh

# swap in a test config
~/repos/github/my-repos/Claude-MD-Tester/bin/activate.sh symlink-test

# (start a fresh Claude Code session to test)

# restore — always safe, always idempotent
~/repos/github/my-repos/Claude-MD-Tester/bin/restore.sh

The first activate moves the real ~/.claude/CLAUDE.md to ~/.claude/CLAUDE.md.real and symlinks CLAUDE.md to the chosen config. Restore reverses that. Subsequent activates just relink — the backup is touched only on the first swap.

Safety guarantees

• Restore never depends on Claude. It's a 20-line bash script that you can run from any terminal, even with no internet, even if Claude is unresponsive.
• Activate refuses to clobber a backup. If CLAUDE.md.real already exists when activate is asked to back up a regular file, it aborts. You will never silently lose your real config to a stale backup collision.
• Symlink mode is detectable. status.sh shows whether you're in test mode at a glance.

Adding a new test config

Drop a markdown file in configs/. The filename (without .md) becomes the config name. That's it.