# Why Does Claude in Cursor Keep Creating Markdown “Work Summary” Files? **URL:** \ **Category:** Discussions\ **Tags:** anthropic\ **Created:** [January 30, 2026, 9:20pm UTC](https://forum.cursor.com/t/why-does-claude-in-cursor-keep-creating-markdown-work-summary-files/150420 "2026-01-30T21:20:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![love\_chaos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@love\_chaos](https://forum.cursor.com/u/love_chaos)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2026, 9:20pm UTC](https://forum.cursor.com/t/why-does-claude-in-cursor-keep-creating-markdown-work-summary-files/150420/1 "2026-01-30T21:20:33Z")
Hi everyone, I’m using Cursor and I’ve noticed a behavior specific to Claude models that I don’t really understand: they often create one (or even several) Markdown files like `SUMMARY.md`, `REPORT.md`, etc., describing what they did. For me this feels unnecessary and even counterproductive: - I’d rather get a short summary directly in the assistant message (a few bullet points), not in a separate file. - It wastes tokens on “documentation about the work” instead of the work itself. - With Haiku in particular, I sometimes see multiple Markdown files created for very small changes. - Other models I’ve tried in Cursor don’t seem to do this. A recent example: Sonnet 4.5 Thinking created the following files after a change: ```auto 📚 Documentation Created I've created 5 comprehensive documentation files: NOTIFICATION_REFACTOR_SUMMARY.md - Quick overview and checklist NOTIFICATION_SYSTEM_REFACTOR.md - Complete implementation details NOTIFICATION_FLOW_DIAGRAM.md - Visual flowcharts with examples NOTIFICATION_TEMPLATES.md - Template reference with formatting rules NOTIFICATION_DEPLOYMENT_GUIDE.md - Step-by-step deployment instructions ``` I don’t need any of these files. They don’t provide value for my workflow and they’re just noise I have to delete manually. Is this expected / by design in Cursor’s Claude integration? Is Cursor prompting Claude to “write a report” somewhere, or is it coming from Claude’s own defaults? And is there a setting or prompt tweak to disable this behavior and force a short inline summary instead? Would appreciate any tips or workarounds. ---
**Author:** ![liquefy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/edb3f5/32.png) [@liquefy](https://forum.cursor.com/u/liquefy)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2026, 10:48pm UTC](https://forum.cursor.com/t/why-does-claude-in-cursor-keep-creating-markdown-work-summary-files/150420/3 "2026-01-30T22:48:00Z")
This is not meant to happen, but used to be a problem with claude models. Do you have any skills/rules setup? If so, check if they mention any of this. What helps is creating a simple rule, saying the agent should not create summary md files. Hope this helps. ---
**Author:** ![Chris\_Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/da6949/32.png) [@Chris\_Drake](https://forum.cursor.com/u/Chris_Drake)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2026, 2:10am UTC](https://forum.cursor.com/t/why-does-claude-in-cursor-keep-creating-markdown-work-summary-files/150420/4 "2026-01-31T02:10:14Z")
Might be better to let it do that - context is important, and this helps it remember ---
**Author:** ![Joseph\_Gonzales](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/3ab097/32.png) [@Joseph\_Gonzales](https://forum.cursor.com/u/Joseph_Gonzales)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2026, 5:38am UTC](https://forum.cursor.com/t/why-does-claude-in-cursor-keep-creating-markdown-work-summary-files/150420/5 "2026-01-31T05:38:42Z")
The model understands the context perfectly well without dozens of reports. Working with Claude, I had a situation where the model did nothing but write reports about what had supposedly been done, but in fact not a single line of code had been written. ---
**Author:** ![DjWarmonger](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/cursor1/user_avatar/forum.cursor.com/djwarmonger/32/28495_2.png) [@DjWarmonger](https://forum.cursor.com/u/DjWarmonger)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2026, 12:57pm UTC](https://forum.cursor.com/t/why-does-claude-in-cursor-keep-creating-markdown-work-summary-files/150420/6 "2026-01-31T12:57:53Z")
I also had it happen many times with Haiku 4.5 specifically. Sometimes it just falls into the rabbit hole and keeps producing files like FINAL\_REPORT\_SUMMARY.md indefinitely - I had to stop it manually. ---
**Author:** ![deanrie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/cursor1/user_avatar/forum.cursor.com/deanrie/32/1263_2.png) [@deanrie](https://forum.cursor.com/u/deanrie)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2026, 2:01pm UTC](https://forum.cursor.com/t/why-does-claude-in-cursor-keep-creating-markdown-work-summary-files/150420/7 "2026-01-31T14:01:05Z")
Hey, thanks for the request. This is a known issue with Claude models, and @liquefy suggested the right workaround. Fix: Create a rule in `.cursor/rules/` that explicitly forbids creating summary files. For example, `no-summaries`: ```markdown --- description: "Prevent creating summary markdown files" alwaysApply: true --- Do not create markdown summary or documentation files (SUMMARY.md, REPORT.md, documentation.md, etc.). Provide brief summaries directly in chat messages instead. ``` What else to check: If you already have Rules or Skills, take a look there too. You might have instructions that tell it to generate docs. This behavior sometimes gets added by accident in custom rules. About the issue: The team is aware of it, but for now the best approach is the rule above. Let me know if the rule helps. ---
**Author:** ![rsb](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/cursor1/user_avatar/forum.cursor.com/rsb/32/105029_2.png) [@rsb](https://forum.cursor.com/u/rsb)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2026, 6:07pm UTC](https://forum.cursor.com/t/why-does-claude-in-cursor-keep-creating-markdown-work-summary-files/150420/8 "2026-01-31T18:07:46Z")
In my experience, this propensity to create long MD files seems to be a quirk of Sonnet 4.5 (thinking and non-thinking). I didn’t experience it in earlier Sonnet versions, and in my cursory use of Opus 4.1 and my now daily use of Opus 4.5, I haven’t observed this behavior. I don’t have anything in my .cursorrules file prohibiting or promoting this behavior, which suggests that it’s a model problem. This was the primary thing that motivated my move away from Sonnet, although @deanrie ‘s workaround sounds like a good idea. ---
**Author:** ![love\_chaos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@love\_chaos](https://forum.cursor.com/u/love_chaos)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2026, 8:21pm UTC](https://forum.cursor.com/t/why-does-claude-in-cursor-keep-creating-markdown-work-summary-files/150420/9 "2026-01-31T20:21:21Z")
@liquefy @deanrie Thanks! I will try this for a couple of days and report back. ---
**Author:** ![Joseph\_Gonzales](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/3ab097/32.png) [@Joseph\_Gonzales](https://forum.cursor.com/u/Joseph_Gonzales)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2026, 1:33am UTC](https://forum.cursor.com/t/why-does-claude-in-cursor-keep-creating-markdown-work-summary-files/150420/10 "2026-02-01T01:33:08Z")
> [@DjWarmonger](#): > > FINAL\_REPORT\_SUMMARY.md I hate documentation file names like these. FINAL\_RELEASE.md READY\_FOR\_DEPLOY.md PUBLIC\_READY.md FINAL\_STATUS.md ![Screenshot 2025-11-14 at 10.20.33](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/cursor1/original/3X/d/a/dae81d8d1588a578976359cb02cd33bdeceb8c17.png) ---
**Author:** ![system](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/cursor1/user_avatar/forum.cursor.com/system/32/99069_2.png) [@system](https://forum.cursor.com/u/system)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2026, 1:33am UTC](https://forum.cursor.com/t/why-does-claude-in-cursor-keep-creating-markdown-work-summary-files/150420/11 "2026-05-02T01:33:48Z")
Closed on May 2, 2026, 1:33am UTC This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.