From a Single File to an MCP Server: Six Rewrites of My Own Harness

The file was 1,800 lines long. It lived at ~/.claude/CLAUDE.md. It had grown a table of contents on top, then nested headings, then a few inline rules that contradicted each other, then a section I had forgotten I wrote. I was halfway through adding another rule when I realized I could not remember which of the previous rules it would override. I closed the file. The next morning I broke it into five smaller files. That was the first rewrite. Six months later, the same set of ideas lives inside an MCP serve