livenerf’s headless claude -p uses --setting-sources project against an empty working directory. On Claude Code 2.1.280 that still injected ~/.claude/CLAUDE.md. Their HERMETIC_ENV sets CLAUDE_CODE_DISABLE_CLAUDE_MDS=1 with the auto-memory and advisor flags; they measured 11.2k context tokens with those unset and 0.55k with them set. I fetched the provider without running claude -p.

--setting-sources on the CLI page is user, project, local. --bare is documented to skip CLAUDE.md along with hooks and skills.