Claude Projects: User Guide

Why Projects change everything

Without a Project, every conversation starts from scratch: you must re-paste the context, tone, and documents. With a Project, Claude already knows who you are, who you work for, and which rules to follow.

Who can use them?

Projects are available to all users, including the free plan, which is limited to five projects. On paid plans, when the document base approaches the model's working memory limit, Claude automatically activates a document-search mode to extend its capacity.

Create a Project in 4 steps

1. Go to claude.ai/projects (or click "Projects" in the left menu).
2. Click "+ New Project".
3. Give it a name and a description. Note: Claude does not see these two fields; they are only for your organization.
4. On Team and Enterprise plans, choose visibility: private or shared with organization members.

Writing good instructions

Click "Set project instructions". These instructions apply to all the Project's conversations. They should describe how Claude should work: role, audience, tone, format, and rules to follow.

Instruction template for a "Client" Project

Template for a "Writing in our voice" Project

Filling the knowledge base

Add your reference documents in the knowledge area, on the right side of the Project page. They will be used in all conversations. Content ideas:

• your tone guide and some validated examples;
• your rates, general terms, and procedures;
• for a client: the specifications, minutes, and previous deliverables;
• an internal FAQ with validated answers.

Important: context is not shared between conversations in the same Project unless it is added to the knowledge base. If an important decision is made in a conversation, add it to the Project's documents.

Share with the team

On Team and Enterprise plans, a Project can be shared with colleagues. The whole team then works with the same instructions and documents, which yields consistent results, faster onboarding for new members, and fewer reinvented prompts.

Go further: Projects in Cowork

In the desktop app, Claude Cowork offers its own projects, with instructions, a local folder, scheduled tasks, and a record of completed work. It also allows importing the files and instructions from an existing Project.

The first 6 Projects to create

1. Emails and client relations: tone, commercial policy, standard responses.
2. Marketing content: brand guide and validated examples.
3. One Project per major client: context and deliverables.
4. Internal procedures: the company's know-how, accessible to everyone.
5. Commercial proposals: offers, rates, references.
6. Tracking and analysis: reference sources and summary format.

Common mistakes

• A catch-all Project for everyone: it's better to have one Project per use case.
• Instructions that describe content instead of the expected behavior.
• Outdated documents that are never updated.
• Assuming Claude remembers a previous Project conversation without having added it to the knowledge base.