Projects — Organize Conversations and Knowledge

Tired of telling Claude "I'm a sales rep, respond in bullet points, avoid jargon" at the start of every conversation? Managing dozens of chat threads across different work topics?

Projects solves both problems. It groups related conversations, files, and settings into a single workspace. Set custom instructions and reference materials once, and every conversation in that Project inherits them automatically.

What Are Projects?

Projects are dedicated workspaces that organize your Claude conversations by topic or task.

How Projects Differ from Regular Chat

Why You'll Love Projects

1. No more repeating yourself

"I'm in HR." "Use bullet points." "No jargon." — Set these as custom instructions once, and they apply to every conversation in the project.

2. Always-available reference materials

Upload company manuals, product specs, past reports — Claude references them automatically when answering.

3. Organized conversations

"Recruiting," "Marketing Campaign," "Product Launch" — keep conversations grouped by topic. Finding past discussions becomes easy.

Creating a Project

New Project Setup

1. Log in to claude.ai
2. Find the "Projects" section in the left sidebar
3. Click "+ New Project" or "New project"
4. Enter a project name (e.g., "Recruiting 2026," "Q3 Marketing")
5. Click "Create project" — done!

The project starts with empty custom instructions and knowledge. Next sections cover how to set them up.

Starting Conversations in a Project

Open a project and click "New chat" to start a conversation with custom instructions and knowledge automatically loaded.

Managing Conversations

• Star: Mark important conversations for easy access
• Archive: Hide completed conversations without deleting
• Delete: Remove conversations permanently (cannot be undone)

Tip: Deleted conversations cannot be recovered. Use Archive instead when you're unsure.

Setting Custom Instructions

Custom instructions tell Claude "In this project, always behave this way."

How to Set Them

1. Open the project
2. Click "Project settings" or "Edit" (top right or settings icon)
3. Enter instructions in the "Custom instructions" field
4. Save

Ready-to-Use Instruction Templates

Copy and customize these for your work:

Sales & Proposals

You are my sales assistant.
Rules:
- Respond in bullet points (3-5 items)
- Use specific numbers and examples
- Avoid jargon — use language I can repeat directly to clients
- For proposals and emails, use professional but concise business tone

HR & Recruiting

You are an HR recruiting assistant.
- When creating job postings, interview questions, or evaluations,
  use fair, unbiased language
- Comply with applicable employment and anti-discrimination laws
- Use professional tone for external documents, conversational for internal

Marketing & Content

You are a content marketing assistant.
Brand info:
- Brand name: [Your Brand]
- Target audience: 30-40 year-old business professionals
- Tone: Approachable, practical. Avoid complex language.

Follow these brand guidelines for all articles and social posts.

Learning & Research

I'm a beginner learning [topic].
When explaining:
- Use simple language with analogies
- Define important terms when they first appear
- End with a quick quiz question to check understanding

Tip: Keep custom instructions to 3-5 key points. Too many instructions can be counterproductive. Save detailed instructions for individual conversations.

Using Knowledge

Knowledge is your project's reference library — documents and files that Claude can reference anytime within the project.

Adding Files

1. Open Project settings
2. In the "Knowledge" section, click "Add content" or "Upload files"
3. Select and upload files
4. Files become immediately available in all project conversations

Supported File Types

PDF notes:

• PDFs under 100 pages can be analyzed visually (images, charts included)
• PDFs over 1,000 pages are analyzed as text only

Size Limits

Knowledge Use Cases

Company policies and procedures

Upload employee handbooks, expense policies, and SOPs. Ask "What's the deadline for expense reports?" or "Walk me through the approval process" and get answers based on your actual documents.

Product and service documentation

Upload product specs, pricing sheets, and FAQ docs. Use them for customer inquiry responses and proposal creation.

Research materials

Upload papers, reports, or articles. Ask "Summarize the key findings" or "What do these three sources have in common?"

Tip: If Claude doesn't seem to reference your Knowledge, explicitly mention it: "Based on the product spec uploaded to Knowledge, ..."

Use Cases by Role

Recruiting

Upload: Job descriptions, interview scorecards, candidate personas

I have a [role] interview next week.
Based on the job description and scorecard in Knowledge,
create 10 interview questions organized into:
- Background verification questions
- Technical competency questions
- Culture fit questions

Customer Support

Upload: Product manual, FAQ, response guidelines

A customer sent this inquiry.
Using the FAQ and product manual in Knowledge,
draft a professional and accurate reply under 150 words.

[Customer inquiry]
(paste inquiry here)

Training Materials

Upload: Company policies, operational manuals, past training decks

Create an outline for a new employee onboarding presentation.
- Duration: 2 hours
- Audience: Sales team new hires
- Topics: Company rules, sales process basics, CRM tool usage

Align content with the operational manual in Knowledge.

Content Creation

Upload: Past articles, brand guidelines, keyword lists

Suggest 5 blog topics for this month.
- Target readers: Small business owners
- Season: Spring (April)
- Don't overlap with past articles in Knowledge
- Include one target search keyword per topic

Tip: "Claude gives generic answers instead of using my Knowledge" — try explicitly saying "Refer to the documents uploaded to this project's Knowledge."

Team Sharing (Team / Enterprise)

Team and Enterprise plans can share Projects with team members.

Visibility Settings

Permission Levels

Inviting Members

Individual invites:

1. Open Project settings
2. Go to "Share" or "Members"
3. Enter the member's email address
4. Select permission (Can use / Can edit) and invite

Bulk invites: Enter multiple email addresses separated by commas.

Team Use Cases

Customer Support Team

• Knowledge: Product manual + FAQ
• Custom instructions: Response tone and rules
• All agents: "Can use" permission
• Result: Consistent quality across all customer interactions

Marketing Team

• Knowledge: Brand guidelines + target audience definition
• Custom instructions: Brand tone and style
• Content creators: "Can edit" / Stakeholders: "Can use"
• Result: Consistent brand messaging across all content

Note: Changing custom instructions or Knowledge in a shared project affects all members. Grant "Can edit" permission carefully.

Plan Comparison

RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) automatically searches through large document collections to find relevant information for Claude's responses. Free plan is limited to what fits in the context window; paid plans can handle much larger knowledge bases.

Next Steps

• Claude Web Guide — Overview of all Claude Web features
• Artifacts — Create documents and code in conversation. Powerful combined with Project Knowledge
• Memory — Manage information Claude should remember across all projects
• Deep Research — Delegate complex research. Save findings as Knowledge for reuse