How to write yours.
How to write yours.
Four kinds of instructions. Written once, reused on every request from there on. Configuring AI is just writing the right ones.
Give Claude access to your files.
Start here. Install Claude Code: the version of Claude that runs on your computer and can create, edit, and delete files directly. (ChatGPT and Codex are catching up; pick whichever fits your stack.) Then point it at the folder where your work lives: client emails, project notes, contracts, drafts, the decisions you've already made. That's the foundation. Once you've done this, AI is no longer a chat box. It's a coworker working in the same files you do, and every other step builds on top of this. If your folders are a mess to begin with, that's the first part of the work. I help with that too.
~/Cortex/ ├── Projects/ │ ├── Business Development/ │ ├── Cortex/ │ ├── Royal Odyssey/ │ └── Integraccess/ ├── Database/ │ ├── journal/ │ ├── decision/ │ └── task/ └── CLAUDE.md
An example of how I keep mine. Yours can look however your work already does.
Write down how you work.
Now you create a file at the top of that folder, called CLAUDE.md. This is the most important one in the whole setup. Claude reads it before every single message you send. Inside, you put everything you'd otherwise re-explain every time. Your conventions: how you write proposals, how you reply to clients, what you'd never do for a client. Your principles: the defaults you've earned the hard way, your standards for what's worth shipping, your business philosophy. Once it's in here, Claude carries it forward on every request. The longer you run the setup, the more of your judgment lives in this file. That's the difference between AI sounding generic and AI thinking the way you do.
One file at the top of the folder. When a topic gets long it splits into its own rule file (email-voice.md, proposal-structure.md). Same mechanism, one chapter per file.
## Working style - default to the naive option. burden of proof is on the complex alternative. - terse output. state results directly. - bias toward action. when pol asks for something, execute it. - no em dashes. use periods, colons, commas, parentheses depending on intent. ## Safety defaults - ask before destructive operations. - snapshot replaced content to a journal before deletion.
Codify the work you repeat.
Look at the work you do every week. Drafting client replies. Writing the weekly recap. Logging a decision with its reasoning. For each routine, write a short markdown file in .claude/skills/ that describes what it does and when to use it. From then on, you trigger the whole thing with one sentence. Codified once, run on demand. Most of mine are 20 to 50 lines; none take more than an afternoon to write. After a couple of months you'll have a dozen skills covering the work you used to type by hand.
- draft-email-reply · pulls thread context, drafts in my voice, flags open questions
- weekly-recap · reads the week's calendar and journals, writes the client update
- log-decision · captures a choice with reasoning, linked to project
- write-it-down · mid-session journal flush, per project touched
- conduct-review · audits an internal artifact, surfaces findings
- fanout-synthesis · spawns 2-5 parallel research agents, reconciles
- clear-fix · cascades the consequences of a rename or move
Each one is a plain text file in .claude/skills/. Codified once, run on demand.
Connect AI to the tools you already use.
Last step: wire Claude into the tools you already work in. MCPs (Model Context Protocols) are the connectors. Each one is a small package you install once that lets Claude talk to one of your apps through the app's existing permissions. Pick the ones from your real stack: your email, your calendar, your CRM, your accounting, your design files. By the end of this step, Claude isn't just reading your work folder. It's reading and writing across your whole working environment.
Each connector runs through the original tool's permissions. Nothing intermediated. Add whichever of your tools have an MCP.
Recent setups
Built a project-intake pipeline. AI reads a new client brief, pulls precedent from past engagements, drafts the scope in the studio's voice. Producer reviews, edits, sends. First-proposal turnaround dropped from half a day to twenty minutes.
Wrote the instructions for the booking and ops side: AI drafts the weekly client status from session notes, generates invoices, flags follow-ups.
[One sentence on what was set up.] [One sentence on what changed.]
Next · the same instructions, doing work, live in this conversation ↓