Stop Re-Explaining Yourself With One Folder Your AI Always Reads

Monday morning, a new chat, and the cursor blinks in an empty box. You paste the same paragraph again, about who you are and what you sell. It says you can't stand bullet points, and that "Sam" means your business partner and not your son.

This is the fifth time, and you know what happens if you skip the paragraph. The answer comes back written for anyone.

Every new chat starts from nothing. Claude and ChatGPT both have a fix built in that most people have never clicked on, and the fix is called a Project.

Think of the folder you'd leave out for a temp on their first morning. On top goes a note about how things work here, and inside go the documents they'll need, with room for whatever they pick up.

A Project is that folder. Open a chat inside the Project and AI already knows your price list, your tone and the kids' term dates.

Open a chat outside the Project, and none of that comes along. Work stays in the work folder and home stuff stays in the home folder, which is why folders beat one enormous memory.

The same folder fixes long chats going stale. The things that must never slip live in the folder, so every chat can stay short.

Make one for the thing you explain most

For most people that's work, whether it's the business, the job, or the thing you're building. After that, add the few files that answer the questions you keep being asked.

That might be a price list, the brand guide, last year's report, or your CV if you're job hunting. Three to six files is plenty to start, because a Project with forty documents in it is a cupboard, not a colleague.

Write the note on top in five blanks

This is the step where people tend to go wrong. Some write one line ("help me with my business"), and some paste in a template built for someone else.

Write your own, badly if you must, and then let AI pick holes in it.

This is for [who you are and what this Project covers].
I'm usually writing to [who].
I like things written [short, plain, no bullet points, or whatever's true].
Always check with me before [assuming anything about my situation, guessing a price, writing to a client].
Never do these things in here [send anything, buy anything, pretend to be me].

Above are the instructions for a Project you'll work inside. Read them as if you'll have to follow them in a hundred chats. Tell me what's unclear, what's missing, and anything that contradicts itself. Suggest fixes in one line each. Don't rewrite them.

Keep the fixes you agree with. Five blanks you filled in yourself beat two hundred polished words AI wrote, because you'll remember what you meant by your own words.

When the note is done, paste it into the Project's instructions box. The next chat you open in there starts out knowing you.

If you stare at the blanks and nothing comes, let AI interview you. Try this. "Ask me one question at a time. Ask about who this Project is for, who I write to and how I like things written. Ask what you should check with me first, and what you must never do. Then write the instructions for me to edit." The blanks come easier once you've said the answers out loud.

Date the files and reread the note

A Project reads the files you gave it, so if a file is out of date, AI will quote last year's price list with total confidence. To stop that, put a date in each file name and swap the file when things change.

Now and then AI drifts from the note on top as well, so reread the note every couple of months and tighten what has slipped. File limits and memory settings differ between tools and plans, and they change, so check your tool's own help page for the current numbers.

Add the next folder, and keep some things out

Once the first Project earns its keep, add two more.

• The house. This holds the manuals, the tenancy or mortgage, the boiler service date and the broadband contract. With those filed, "When's the boiler due?" becomes a question you ask instead of a drawer you search.
• Whatever you're learning. This holds your notes and the quiz rules (the study page explains why the rules matter).

Keep out anything you wouldn't leave in a temp's folder overnight, for example medical letters, bank statements, and other people's private details. A Project remembers, which is the whole point and also the risk.

If AI needs to read a private document once, use a temporary chat and don't file the document. What goes in the folder is your call, and so is every word of the note on top.

The folder I'd fill next is your voice. Teaching AI to write like you shows what goes in, including ten examples of your writing.