When your AI agent applies one project's choice to another
You chose violet as the accent colour for one website. Two weeks later, in a different project, the agent makes everything violet. Or the opposite: you said every website gets a privacy page, and the agent treats it as something that applied to that one site. This guide is about telling the two apart.
Habits and one-offs
- A habit describes how you always work. "Every website gets a privacy page." "Error messages use plain language." It should follow you into every project.
- A one-off belongs to one project or one task. "This project's accent colour is violet." "Use the staging database for this migration." It should stay where you said it.
The words often look the same. "Use violet" and "use plain language" are both short instructions. Which one is a habit depends on what you meant, and you rarely say.
Why agents mix them up
When a preference is saved, by you or by the agent, it goes somewhere: a personal file that every project reads, or a project file that only one does. If a one-off lands in the personal file, it leaks into every project. If a habit lands in one project's file, every other project misses it.
What you can do today, without any tool
- Say the scope. "From now on, in every project" or "just for this one" removes the guess.
- Keep personal and project files separate. Personal habits in
~/.claude/CLAUDE.mdor your CodexAGENTS.md; project choices in the repository. - Review the personal file now and then. Look for lines that only made sense for one project, and move them.
How Varyz helps
Varyz keeps scope as part of every rule and every answer, so your vision, taste, and creative perspective go where they belong.
- Each rule has a scope. A habit applies to all your projects; a project choice stays with that project; a task answer stays with that task.
- It files answers when you don't say. When you answer a question without saying whether it is a habit or a one-off, Varyz decides, and you can change it.
- You can review and move anything. Answers and rules are kept as a history. Replace one, change its scope or take it back, and agents hear the new version from then on.
In our own benchmark, 0 one-off choices leaked into another project, and 97% of answers were filed correctly when the owner did not say which (30 answers). Those are internal results with a simulated owner and small samples; see how Varyz is measured.
Download local Varyz for free. Read how Varyz works, or more guides.
Start with what you already know.
Your preferences, your project history and your standards, ready for the next task.