Import Depth Within Limit

Claude Code's CLAUDE.md @import chains have a documented hard limit of 5 hops. Imports beyond depth 5 are not resolved — content past the cutoff is silently dropped. This stub supersedes the more permissive CORE ceiling with Claude's actual documented threshold so the agent-specific cap is enforced when the project is scanned with --agent claude or when Claude is auto-detected.

Antipatterns

• Transitive chaining past 5. CLAUDE.md imports docs/setup.md, which imports docs/details/config.md, and the chain continues past depth 5. Claude Code stops following imports at the 5-hop boundary and the deeper content is not in context.
• Circular imports. File A imports B, B imports C, C imports A. Claude Code's resolver detects and breaks the cycle, but the author likely didn't intend it.
• Import as organization substitute. Using @import chains to simulate a file hierarchy instead of structuring content into focused files that the agent loads directly.

Pass / Fail

Pass

<!-- CLAUDE.md (depth 0) -->
@import docs/testing.md

<!-- docs/testing.md (depth 1) -->
@import docs/style/formatting.md

<!-- docs/style/formatting.md (depth 2) -->
@import docs/style/fixtures.md

<!-- docs/style/fixtures.md (depth 3) — well within Claude's 5-hop limit -->
# Test Fixtures
Use `conftest.py` for shared setup.

Fail

<!-- CLAUDE.md (depth 0) -->
@import docs/overview.md
<!-- docs/overview.md → docs/details.md → docs/internals.md →
     docs/deep/a.md → docs/deep/b.md → docs/deep/c.md  ← depth 6, exceeds Claude's 5 -->

Limitations

Counts depth from the root CLAUDE.md. Does not evaluate whether the chain is justified by project complexity. Only follows @<path> syntax — other inclusion mechanisms are not detected. The 5-hop ceiling is Claude Code's documented hard truncation; future Claude Code versions may revise it.