The pieces fit together: CLAUDE.md stores your long-term rules, hooks enforce them automatically, skills compress repetitive prompts into slash commands, and worktrees let you run multiple sessions in parallel. Once in place, each session starts where the last one left off.
I treat CLAUDE.md like a changelog for Claude's behavior. Every mistake Claude repeats gets a rule. When friction shows up in your workflow, write a hook that removes it. The system accumulates over time and each session runs faster than the one before.