Claude Code System Prompts

[!tip] NEW (June 12, 2026): We've greatly expanded this list with many more of Claude Code's prompts—from 350 to 515 (+165)—our most complete coverage yet.

This repository contains an up-to-date list of all Claude Code's various system prompts and their associated token counts as of Claude Code v2.1.186 (June 22nd, 2026). It also contains a CHANGELOG.md for the system prompts across 216 versions since v2.0.14. From the team behind Piebald.

This repository is updated within minutes of each Claude Code release. See the changelog, and follow @PiebaldAI on X for a summary of the system prompt changes in each release.

[!note] ⭐ Star this repository to get notified about new Claude Code versions. For each new Claude Code version, we create a release on GitHub, which will notify all users who've starred the repository.

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Why multiple "system prompts?"

Claude Code doesn't just have one single string for its system prompt.

Instead, there are:

• Large portions conditionally added depending on the environment and various configs.
• Descriptions for builtin tools like Write, Bash, and TodoWrite, and some are fairly large.
• Separate system prompts for builtin agents like Explore and Plan.
• Numerous AI-powered utility functions, such as conversation compaction, CLAUDE.md generation, session title generation, etc. featuring their own systems prompts.

The result—500+ strings that are constantly changing and moving within a very large minified JS file.

[!important] Want to modify a particular piece of the system prompt in your own Claude Code installation? Use tweakcc. It—

• lets you customize the individual pieces of the system prompt as markdown files, and then
• patches your npm-based or native (binary) Claude Code installation with them, and also
• provides diffing and conflict management for when both you and Anthropic have conflicting modifications to the same prompt file.

Extraction

This repository contains the system prompts extracted using a script from the latest npm version of Claude Code. As they're extracted directly from Claude Code's compiled source code, they're guaranteed to be exactly what Claude Code uses. If you use tweakcc to customize the system prompts, it works in a similar way—it patches the exact same strings in your local installation as are extracted into this repository.

Prompts

Note that some prompts contain interpolated bits such as builtin tool name references, lists of available sub agents, and various other context-specific variables, so the actual counts in a particular Claude Code session will differ slightly—likely not beyond ±20 tokens, however.

Agent Prompts

Sub-agents and utilities.

Sub-agents

• Agent Prompt: Explore (575 tks) - System prompt for the Explore subagent.
• Agent Prompt: Plan mode (enhanced) (715 tks) - Enhanced prompt for the Plan subagent.

Creation Assistants

• Agent Prompt: Agent creation architect (1110 tks) - System prompt for creating custom AI agents with detailed specifications.
• Agent Prompt: CLAUDE.md creation (513 tks) - System prompt for analyzing codebases and creating CLAUDE.md documentation files.
• Agent Prompt: Status line setup (2433 tks) - System prompt for the statusline-setup agent that configures status line display.

Slash Commands

• Agent Prompt: /batch slash command (1106 tks) - Instructions for orchestrating a large, parallelizable change across a codebase.
• Agent Prompt: /code-review part 1 base finder angles (145 tks) - Line-by-line diff scan instructions for the /code-review slash command's finder-angle phase.
• Agent Prompt: /code-review part 2 low effort mode (345 tks) - Low-effort /code-review prompt that reads the diff once and returns up to four hunk-visible runtime correctness findings.
• Agent Prompt: /code-review part 3 extra-high and maximum effort modes (0 tks) - Extra-high and maximum-effort /code-review prompt that runs five finder angles, one-vote verification, a gap sweep, and capped JSON findings.
• Agent Prompt: /code-review part 4 three-state verification phase (98 tks) - Verification phase for /code-review that asks one agent verifier to classify each candidate as confirmed, plausible, or refuted.
• Agent Prompt: /code-review part 5 recall-biased verification phase (175 tks) - Recall-biased /code-review verification phase that treats realistic uncertain findings as plausible unless code refutes them.
• Agent Prompt: /code-review part 6 medium effort mode (0 tks) - Medium-effort /code-review prompt that favors precision with three finder angles, one-vote verification, and up to eight JSON findings.
• Agent Prompt: /code-review part 7 high effort mode (0 tks) - High-effort /code-review prompt that favors recall with three finder angles, recall-biased verification, and up to ten JSON findings.
• Agent Prompt: /code-review part 8 GitHub comment posting (152 tks) - Optional /code-review instructions for posting findings as GitHub inline PR comments when --comment is passed.
• Agent Prompt: /code-review part 9 fix application (126 tks) - Optional /code-review instructions for applying findings to the working tree when --fix is passed.
• Agent Prompt: /rename auto-generate session name (80 tks) - Prompt used by /rename (no args) to auto-generate a kebab-case session name from conversation context.
• Agent Prompt: /review slash command (412 tks) - Instructions for the /review command to review a GitHub pull request by gathering PR context and diff with gh, applying optional user instructions, and presenting verified findings.
• Agent Prompt: /schedule slash command (3131 tks) - Guides the user through scheduling, updating, listing, or running remote Claude Code agents on cron triggers via the Anthropic cloud API.
• Agent Prompt: /security-review slash command (2521 tks) - Comprehensive security review prompt for analyzing code changes with focus on exploitable vulnerabilities.
• Agent Prompt: /simplify slash command (362 tks) - Instructions for the /simplify slash command that reviews changed code for reuse, simplification, efficiency, and altitude cleanups, then applies the fixes.

Utilities

• Agent Prompt: Agent Hook (122 tks) - Prompt for an 'agent hook'.
• Agent Prompt: Auto mode rule reviewer (292 tks) - Reviews and critiques user-defined auto mode classifier rules for clarity, completeness, conflicts, and actionability.
• Agent Prompt: Away summary generation (73 tks) - Prompts a no-tools away-summary generation run to recap the goal, current task, and next action when the user returns.
• Agent Prompt: Background agent state classifier (4405 tks) - Classifies the tail of a background agent transcript as working, blocked, done, or failed and returns concise state JSON.
• Agent Prompt: Background job agent instructions (427 tks) - Instructs the built-in background job agent to narrate progress, restate tool results, and emit explicit result, needs input, or failed status signals.
• Agent Prompt: Bash command description writer (207 tks) - Instructions for generating clear, concise command descriptions in active voice for bash commands.
• Agent Prompt: Bash command prefix detection (823 tks) - System prompt for detecting command prefixes and command injection.
• Agent Prompt: Claude Code guide (143 tks) - Subagent that answers Claude Code feature/SDK/API questions.
• Agent Prompt: Claude guide agent (833 tks) - System prompt for the claude-guide agent that helps users understand and use Claude Code, the Claude Agent SDK and the Claude API effectively.
• Agent Prompt: Coding session title generator (314 tks) - Generates a title for the coding session.
• Agent Prompt: Conversation summarization (1201 tks) - System prompt for creating detailed conversation summaries.
• Agent Prompt: Determine which memory files to attach (271 tks) - Agent for determining which memory files to attach for the main agent.
• Agent Prompt: Dream memory consolidation (859 tks) - Instructs an agent to perform a multi-phase memory consolidation pass — orienting on existing memories, gathering recent signal from logs and transcripts, merging updates into topic files, and pruning the index.
• Agent Prompt: Dream memory pruning (456 tks) - Instructs an agent to perform a memory pruning pass by deleting stale or invalidated memory files and collapsing duplicates in the memory directory.
• Agent Prompt: General purpose agent (63 tks) - Defines a general-purpose agent for researching complex questions, searching code, and executing multi-step tasks.
• Agent Prompt: General purpose (285 tks) - System prompt for the general-purpose subagent that searches, analyzes, and edits code across a codebase while reporting findings concisely to the caller.
• Agent Prompt: General task agent (99 tks) - Instructs a Claude Code task agent to complete the user's request fully and report the essential outcome.
• Agent Prompt: Hook condition evaluator (stop) (319 tks) - System prompt for evaluating hook conditions, specifically stop conditions, in Claude Code.
• Agent Prompt: Hook condition evaluator (88 tks) - Instructs an agent to judge whether a user-provided hook condition is met.
• Agent Prompt: Inherited context for worktree sub-agent (121 tks) - Briefs a sub-agent that it has inherited a parent session's context and is now working in its own isolated git worktree.
• Agent Prompt: Managed Agents onboarding flow (3806 tks) - Interactive interview script that helps users configure a Managed Agent by describing the task, proposing tools and resources, setting up the environment and session, testing access, and emitting integration code.
• Agent Prompt: Memory synthesis (449 tks) - Subagent that reads persistent memory files and returns a JSON synthesis of only the information relevant to each query, with cited filenames.
• Agent Prompt: Onboarding guide draft share link workflow (323 tks) - Adds instructions for sharing the draft ONBOARDING.md before review, then updating the same ShareOnboardingGuide link after the user answers the review questions.
• Agent Prompt: Onboarding guide generator (1135 tks) - Co-authors a team onboarding guide (ONBOARDING.md) for new Claude Code users by analyzing the creator's usage data, classifying session types, and iterating on the draft collaboratively.
• Agent Prompt: PR follow-up cron (172 tks) - Cron prompt for checking a pull request created in the session and fixing failures, comments, or conflicts.
• Agent Prompt: Prompt Suggestion Generator v2 (344 tks) - V2 instructions for generating prompt suggestions for Claude Code.
• Agent Prompt: Quick PR creation (986 tks) - Streamlined prompt for creating a commit and pull request with pre-populated context.
• Agent Prompt: Read-only search agent (93 tks) - Defines a read-only search agent for broad fan-out code searches that returns conclusions instead of file dumps.
• Agent Prompt: Recent Message Summarization (804 tks) - Agent prompt used for summarizing recent messages.
• Agent Prompt: Schedule action selection (114 tks) - Instructs the cloud scheduling agent to ask the user which schedule action to perform first.
• Agent Prompt: Security monitor edit-removal guidance (368 tks) - Explains how the security monitor should evaluate Edit and NotebookEdit removals, truncated deletions, missing outcomes, and replace-all edits.
• Agent Prompt: Security monitor for autonomous agent actions (first part) (7776 tks) - Instructs Claude to act as a security monitor that evaluates autonomous coding agent actions against block/allow rules to prevent prompt injection, scope creep, and accidental damage.
• Agent Prompt: Security monitor for autonomous agent actions (second part) (8875 tks) - Defines the environment context, block rules, and allow exceptions that govern which tool actions the agent may or may not perform.
• Agent Prompt: Session search (158 tks) - Subagent prompt for searching past Claude Code conversation sessions by scanning .jsonl transcript files and returning matching session IDs.
• Agent Prompt: Session title and branch generation (307 tks) - Agent for generating succinct session titles and git branch names.
• Agent Prompt: Session transcript chunk summary (89 tks) - Instructs an agent to summarize a chunk of a Claude Code session transcript concisely.
• Agent Prompt: Summarization no-tools guard (107 tks) - Shared prefix for compaction summarization agents that forbids tool use and requires plain text analysis and summary blocks.
• Agent Prompt: WebFetch summarizer (189 tks) - Prompt for agent that summarizes verbose output from WebFetch for the main model.
• Agent Prompt: Worker fork (268 tks) - System prompt for a forked worker sub-agent that executes a single directive from the parent agent and reports back concisely.
• Agent Prompt: Workflow script plain text return note (76 tks) - Appended note telling a workflow script agent that its final text response is parsed as the script return value.
• Agent Prompt: Workflow script structured return note (120 tks) - Appended note telling a workflow script agent to return its final answer by calling the structured output tool exactly once.
• Agent Prompt: Workflow subagent plain text output (154 tks) - Instructs an internal workflow subagent to return its final text verbatim as the calling workflow script's parsed result.
• Agent Prompt: Workflow subagent structured output (190 tks) - Instructs an internal workflow subagent to return its final answer by calling the StructuredOutput tool exactly once with schema-valid input.

Data

The content of various template files embedded in Claude Code.

• Data: Anthropic CLI (4615 tks) - Reference documentation for the ant CLI covering installation, authentication, command structure, input and output shaping, managed agents workflows, and scripting patterns.
• Data: Claude API reference — C# (7777 tks) - C# SDK reference including installation, client initialization, basic requests, streaming, and tool use.
• Data: Claude API reference — Go (3268 tks) - Go SDK reference including installation, client initialization, model constants, basic requests, and thinking.
• Data: Claude API reference — Java (4620 tks) - Java SDK reference including installation, client initialization, basic requests, streaming, and beta tool use.
• Data: Claude API reference — PHP (2470 tks) - PHP SDK reference.
• Data: Claude API reference — Python (7119 tks) - Python SDK reference including installation, client initialization, basic requests, thinking, and multi-turn conversation.
• Data: Claude API reference — Ruby (1782 tks) - Ruby SDK reference including installation, client initialization, basic requests, streaming, and beta tool runner.
• Data: Claude API reference — TypeScript (5550 tks) - TypeScript SDK reference including installation, client initialization, basic requests, thinking, and multi-turn conversation.
• Data: Claude API reference — cURL (2890 tks) - Raw API reference for Claude API for use with cURL or else Raw HTTP.
• Data: Claude Code agent proxy troubleshooting guide (2030 tks) - Troubleshooting guide for Claude Code's policy-enforcing HTTPS agent proxy, covering TLS trust setup, status checks, git, docker, and unsupported traffic.
• Data: Claude Code live documentation sources (1380 tks) - WebFetch URLs for fetching current Claude Code documentation from official sources.
• Data: Claude Code recent changes reference (528 tks) - Reference mapping of recently removed or renamed Claude Code commands, flags, and terms to their current replacements.
• Data: Claude Platform on AWS reference (1608 tks) - Reference documentation for using the Claude Developer Platform through AWS infrastructure, including AnthropicAWS clients, required region and workspace configuration, SigV4 authentication, and short-term API keys.
• Data: Claude model catalog (3079 tks) - Catalog of current and legacy Claude models with exact model IDs, aliases, context windows, and pricing.
• Data: Cowork plugin MCP discovery and connection (1338 tks) - Reference guidance for finding MCP connectors during plugin customization, using search and suggestion tools, mapping categories to keywords, and writing .mcp.json entries.
• Data: Cowork plugin component schemas (3109 tks) - Reference documentation for Cowork plugin component formats, including skills, agents, hooks, MCP servers, legacy commands, CONNECTORS.md, and README.md.
• Data: Cowork plugin examples (2323 tks) - Reference examples of minimal, medium, and complex Cowork plugin structures with plugin metadata, skills, agents, hooks, MCP config, README, and connectors.
• Data: Files API reference — Go (336 tks) - Go Files API reference including file upload, listing, deletion, and usage in messages.
• Data: Files API reference — Python (1360 tks) - Python Files API reference including file upload, listing, deletion, and usage in messages.
• Data: Files API reference — TypeScript (797 tks) - TypeScript Files API reference including file upload, listing, deletion, and usage in messages.
• Data: GitHub Actions workflow for @claude mentions (525 tks) - GitHub Actions workflow template for triggering Claude Code via @claude mentions.
• Data: GitHub App installation PR description (409 tks) - Template for PR description when installing Claude Code GitHub App integration.
• Data: HTTP error codes reference (4671 tks) - Reference for HTTP error codes returned by the Claude API with common causes and handling strategies.
• Data: Knowledge MCP search strategies (447 tks) - Reference query patterns for using knowledge MCPs to discover organization-specific tool names, project identifiers, team names, and workflow details during plugin customization.
• Data: Live documentation sources (4316 tks) - WebFetch URLs for fetching current Claude API and Agent SDK documentation from official sources.
• Data: Managed Agents client patterns (3547 tks) - Reference guide of common client-side patterns for driving Managed Agent sessions, including stream reconnection, idle-break gating, tool confirmations, interrupts, and custom tools.
• Data: Managed Agents core concepts (4000 tks) - Reference documentation for the Managed Agents API covering core concepts (Agents, Sessions, Environments, Containers), lifecycle, versioning, endpoints, and usage patterns.
• Data: Managed Agents endpoint reference (7765 tks) - Comprehensive reference for Managed Agents API endpoints, SDK methods, request/response schemas, error handling, and rate limits.
• Data: Managed Agents environments and resources (3191 tks) - Reference documentation covering Managed Agents environments, file resources, GitHub repository mounting, and the Files API with SDK examples.
• Data: Managed Agents events and steering (3056 tks) - Reference guide for sending and receiving events on managed agent sessions, including streaming, polling, reconnection, message queuing, interrupts, and event payload details.
• Data: Managed Agents memory stores reference (2780 tks) - Reference documentation for Managed Agents memory stores, including store creation, session attachment, FUSE mounts, memory CRUD, concurrency, versions, redaction, and endpoint paths.
• Data: Managed Agents multiagent sessions (1839 tks) - Reference documentation for Managed Agents multiagent sessions, including coordinator rosters, threads, session stream events, subagent tool permissions, and pitfalls.
• Data: Managed Agents outcomes (1772 tks) - Reference documentation for Managed Agents outcomes, including user.define_outcome events, rubrics, outcome evaluation events, deliverables, and interaction rules.
• Data: Managed Agents overview (4045 tks) - Provides the agent with a comprehensive overview of the Managed Agents API architecture, mandatory agent-then-session flow, beta headers, documentation reading guide, and common pitfalls.
• Data: Managed Agents reference — Go (8140 tks) - Reference guide for using the Anthropic Go SDK to create and manage agents, environments, sessions, and tools.
• Data: Managed Agents reference — Java (6612 tks) - Reference guide for using the Anthropic Java SDK to create and manage agents, environments, and sessions.
• Data: Managed Agents reference — PHP (5292 tks) - Reference guide for using the Anthropic PHP SDK to create and manage agents, environments, and sessions.
• Data: Managed Agents reference — Python (2893 tks) - Reference guide for using the Anthropic Python SDK to create and manage agents, sessions, environments, streaming, custom tools, files, and MCP servers.
• Data: Managed Agents reference — Ruby (4076 tks) - Reference guide for using the Anthropic Ruby SDK to create and manage agents, environments, and sessions.
• Data: Managed Agents reference — TypeScript (2875 tks) - Reference guide for using the Anthropic TypeScript SDK to create and manage agents, sessions, environments, streaming, custom tools, file uploads, and MCP server integration.
• Data: Managed Agents reference — cURL (2658 tks) - Provides cURL and raw HTTP request examples for the Managed Agents API including environment, agent, and session lifecycle operations.
• Data: Managed Agents scheduled deployments (1992 tks) - Reference documentation for Managed Agents scheduled deployments, including cron schedule creation, deployment runs, lifecycle operations, failure behavior, and manual runs.
• Data: Managed Agents self-hosted sandboxes (2930 tks) - Reference documentation for running Managed Agents tool execution in self-hosted infrastructure, including environment setup, workers, webhook-driven wake, orchestration, monitoring, credentials, and security responsibilities.
• Data: Managed Agents tools and skills (4953 tks) - Reference documentation covering the Managed Agents SDK's tool types (agent toolset, MCP, custom), permission policies, vault credential management, and skills API for building specialized agents.
• Data: Managed Agents webhooks (1439 tks) - Reference documentation for Managed Agents webhooks, including endpoint registration, signature verification, payload envelopes, supported event types, delivery behavior, and pitfalls.
• Data: Message Batches API reference — Python (1635 tks) - Python Batches API reference including batch creation, status polling, and result retrieval at 50% cost.
• Data: Message Batches API — TypeScript (805 tks) - TypeScript usage guide for Claude's asynchronous Message Batches endpoint.
• Data: Platform availability (2860 tks) - Feature availability matrix across Claude API provider platforms (first-party, Claude Platform on AWS, Bedrock, Vertex, and Foundry).
• Data: Prompt Caching — Design & Optimization (5314 tks) - Document on how to design prompt-building code for effective caching, including placement patterns and anti-patterns.
• Data: Streaming reference — C# (378 tks) - C# streaming reference including streaming events and the RawMessageStreamEvent TryPick methods.
• Data: Streaming reference — PHP (315 tks) - PHP streaming reference including streaming events and handling content block deltas (requires SDK v0.5.0+).
• Data: Streaming reference — Python (1725 tks) - Python streaming reference including sync/async streaming and handling different content types.
• Data: Streaming reference — TypeScript (1675 tks) - TypeScript streaming reference including basic streaming and handling different content types.
• Data: Token counting reference (486 tks) - Reference documentation for counting Claude model tokens with the Messages count_tokens endpoint and Anthropic SDK or CLI examples, including warnings against OpenAI tokenizers.
• Data: Tool use concepts (9119 tks) - Conceptual foundations of tool use with the Claude API including tool definitions, tool choice, and best practices.
• Data: Tool use display metadata field (172 tks) - Documents the tool_use_meta wire field carrying per-block display metadata for a message's tool_use blocks; it is wrapper-level UI metadata and is not replayed to the model.
• Data: Tool use reference — C# (2402 tks) - C# tool use reference including defining tools and reconstructing response content for the follow-up assistant message.
• Data: Tool use reference — Go (3386 tks) - Go tool use reference including the beta tool runner with automatic schema generation and the manual agentic loop.
• Data: Tool use reference — Java (3903 tks) - Java tool use reference including defining tools and the manual agentic loop.
• Data: Tool use reference — PHP (3211 tks) - PHP tool use reference including the beta tool runner and the manual agentic loop with camelCase keys.
• Data: Tool use reference — Python (5106 tks) - Python tool use reference including tool runner, manual agentic loop, code execution, and structured outputs.
• Data: Tool use reference — TypeScript (6530 tks) - TypeScript tool use reference including tool runner, manual agentic loop, code execution, and structured outputs.

System Prompt

Parts of the main system prompt.

• System Prompt: /loop tick (loop.md absent, dynamic pacing) (177 tks) - Loop tick injection for dynamic self-paced autonomous checks when loop.md is absent.
• System Prompt: /loop tick (loop.md tasks) (94 tks) - Loop tick injection for recurring cron-based runs of tasks from loop.md.
• System Prompt: /loop tick (loop.md tasks, dynamic pacing) (174 tks) - Loop tick injection for dynamic self-paced runs of tasks from loop.md.
• System Prompt: Act when ready (68 tks) - Instructs the agent to act once it has enough information and give recommendations instead of exhaustive surveys.
• System Prompt: Action safety and truthful reporting (190 tks) - Requires confirmation for irreversible or outward-facing actions, checking targets before destructive edits, and truthful reporting of outcomes.
• System Prompt: Advisor tool instructions (443 tks) - Instructions for using the Advisor tool.
• System Prompt: Agent Summary Generation (178 tks) - System prompt used for "Agent Summary" generation.
• System Prompt: Agent memory instructions (337 tks) - Instructions for including memory update guidance in agent system prompts.
• System Prompt: Agent thread notes (205 tks) - Behavioral guidelines for agent threads covering absolute paths, response formatting, emoji avoidance, and tool call punctuation.
• System Prompt: Auto mode (244 tks) - Continuous task execution, akin to a background agent.
• System Prompt: Autonomous loop check (1071 tks) - Defines behavior for autonomous timer-based invocations, guiding Claude to continue established work, maintain PRs, and handle repeated idle checks while the user is away.
• System Prompt: Autonomous loop notification guidance (98 tks) - Guides when autonomous loop ticks should notify the user via PushNotification for blockers or actionable state changes.
• System Prompt: Autonomous loop persistence guidance (CLAUDE_CODE_LOOP_PERSISTENT) (1173 tks) - Defines behavior for autonomous timer-based invocations, guiding Claude to persistently continue established work, maintain PRs, and broaden scope before stopping while the user is away.
• System Prompt: Autonomous loop tick (dynamic pacing) (168 tks) - Autonomous loop tick injection for dynamic self-paced autonomous checks scheduled with ScheduleWakeup.
• System Prompt: Autonomous loop tick (87 tks) - Autonomous loop tick injection for recurring cron-based autonomous checks.
• System Prompt: Autonomous operation guidelines (301 tks) - Instructs autonomous sessions to proceed on reversible work, stop for destructive or scope-changing actions, and finish promised work before ending the turn.
• System Prompt: Avoiding Unnecessary Sleep Commands (part of PowerShell tool description) (175 tks) - Guidelines for avoiding unnecessary sleep commands in PowerShell scripts, including alternatives for waiting and notification.
• System Prompt: Background session instructions (153 tks) - Instructions for background job sessions to use the job-specific temporary directory and follow the appropriate worktree isolation guidance.
• System Prompt: Background worktree isolation guidance (129 tks) - Tells background sessions when to enter an isolated worktree before making code changes and when to continue in place.
• System Prompt: Censoring assistance with malicious activities (98 tks) - Guidelines for assisting with authorized security testing, defensive security, CTF challenges, and educational contexts while censoring requests for malicious activities.
• System Prompt: Chrome browser MCP tools (255 tks) - Instructions for loading deferred Chrome browser MCP tools through ToolSearch in a single batched selection before browser tasks.
• System Prompt: Clarifying question research first (88 tks) - Encourages brief read-only investigation before asking the user clarifying questions.

…view the full README on GitHub.