Your CLAUDE.md says "always run tests" — hooks are how you actually mean it

There's a category error hiding in most agent configs: treating a rules file as an enforcement mechanism. It isn't one. CLAUDE.md, AGENTS.md, .cursor/rules — these are advisory context. The model reads them, weighs them against everything else in its window, and usually complies. Usually. The failure mode isn't dramatic. It's a 40-turn session where the instruction "never commit directly to main" is now 30,000 tokens behind the current task, and the model — trying to be helpful — commits…