never-stale

never-stale

Keep your project's docs, language, and conventions in sync through the whole session — and surviving auto-compact. A Claude Code plugin.

The problem: in a long Claude Code session, the assistant quietly drifts. It forgets to update the docs after a change, forgets which language you wanted, and after an auto-compact it loses the rules you set at the top of the conversation.

never-stale fixes that without you having to repeat yourself. Run one command in a project and it installs a small, durable setup that keeps the rules in front of the assistant — including right after every compaction.

What it does

Running /never-stale in a project scaffolds three things:

1. CLAUDE.md — your project rules (auto-loaded every session, survives compaction):
   • the language for spoken replies,
   • the default language for written files,
   • "after any code change, sync the related docs."
2. A SessionStart (compact) hook — re-injects the rules right after an auto-compact, so the assistant doesn't "forget" mid-session.
3. A PostToolUse (Edit/Write) hook — nudges the assistant to sync docs every time a file changes.

The hooks run via Node (which Claude Code already requires), so the same setup works on Windows, macOS, and Linux — no shell-specific scripts, no encoding pitfalls.

Install

/plugin marketplace add biznuts/never-stale
/plugin install never-stale@never-stale

Then, in any project you want to keep in sync:

/never-stale

It asks your language preferences, scaffolds the files, then asks you to restart Claude Code so the hooks load. /hooks will show them registered.

How it works

Piece	Mechanism	Why it survives compaction
Rules	CLAUDE.md	Loaded into context every session, re-injected after compaction
Compact reminder	SessionStart hook, matcher compact	Fires right after auto-compact
Doc-sync reminder	PostToolUse hook, matcher Edit|Write|MultiEdit	Fires after each file change, emitted as additionalContext JSON

The reminders point back to CLAUDE.md (the single source of truth), so changing the language or rules later just means editing that file.

Design notes

• Per-project, opt-in. Nothing is global. The plugin only ships the /never-stale command; it does not impose anything on any project automatically. Run the command where you want it; other projects are untouched.
• Idempotent. Re-running merges/updates instead of duplicating. If the project already has matching hooks, it warns before adding a duplicate.
• Configurable language. The command asks for your spoken-reply language and your written-file default language at scaffold time (both default to English).

Requirements

• Claude Code with plugin support.
• Node.js on PATH (Claude Code already needs it).

License

MIT — see LICENSE.