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/newproject — Standard Project Scaffold

Invoked at the start of every new research project to create a consistent directory structure.

Usage

/newproject my-project-name

What It Creates

my-project-name/
├── CLAUDE.md              # Research rules & estimation philosophy (permanent)
├── README.md              # This file — project-specific notes
├── code/
│   ├── R/                 # R scripts
│   ├── python/            # Python scripts
│   └── stata/             # Stata do-files
├── data/
│   ├── raw/               # Original source data (never modify these)
│   └── clean/             # Cleaned and merged datasets
├── output/
│   ├── tables/            # Generated tables (LaTeX, CSV)
│   └── figures/           # Generated figures (PDF, PNG)
├── documents/             # Outside papers and PDFs (split with /split-pdf)
├── decks/                 # Beamer presentations (rhetoric of decks philosophy)
├── notes/                 # Scratch notes, ideas, miscellaneous
└── progress_logs/         # Session logs for continuity across Claude conversations

Philosophy

Two Configuration Files, Two Purposes

Every project has both a CLAUDE.md and a README.md. They serve different roles:

  • CLAUDE.md is copied from a permanent template at ~/mixtapetools/claude/CLAUDE.md. It contains research rules that apply across all sessions: estimation philosophy ("design before results"), coding conventions, collaborator information, and key methodological decisions. It is the institutional memory of the project — the file that keeps Claude aligned across conversations.

  • README.md is auto-generated by this command and then edited as the project evolves. It is project-specific: what the research question is, who's involved, current status, and how files are organized. It's the file a human reads to understand the project.

Session Continuity

The progress_logs/ directory solves a real problem: Claude Code sessions don't persist. If a session crashes, times out, or you start fresh, the progress log tells the next session exactly where you left off. Logs are dated (YYYY-MM-DD_description.md) and maintained regularly.

Documents and Decks

  • documents/ holds outside PDFs — papers you're reading, referee reports, data documentation. These are candidates for the /split-pdf skill, which splits large PDFs into safe 4-page chunks for reading.

  • decks/ holds Beamer presentations built following the rhetoric of decks philosophy (~/mixtapetools/presentations/rhetoric_of_decks.md). Titles are assertions, one idea per slide, beauty is function.

Data Discipline

  • data/raw/ is read-only by convention. Original source data goes here and is never modified.
  • data/clean/ holds everything that's been transformed, merged, or constructed. Scripts in code/ take raw data and produce clean data.

Installation

This command lives at ~/mixtapetools/.claude/commands/newproject.md and is also available as a skill at ~/mixtapetools/.claude/skills/newproject/SKILL.md. Both are identical in behavior.

To make it available in any project, ensure ~/mixtapetools is in your Claude Code skill search path, or symlink the .claude directory.