Hello,
I promised this one in the last note, so here it is. Projects, and why they're the step that separates folk who dabble with AI from folk who actually get somewhere with it.
with AI platforms, everything lives in scattered chats and every time you start something new you're rebuilding from scratch or hunting for a conversation from three weeks ago. AI anxiety is becoming a thing!
A project fixes that. Both Claude and ChatGPT have the feature, its the same name in both and it's basically a filing cabinet with a brain. You create a project, you load it with the documents that matter, you write it some standing instructions and then every chat you open inside that project already knows everything in the cabinet. No re-explaining and no pasting the same background in for the 37th time.
our meeting minutes setup from a couple of notes back runs on this. standing instructions loaded once and now every transcript we drop in comes back as proper minutes without being told how. That's one project but the proper benefit is realising you want several projects running seperately.
Here's how I'd set up the first one and I'd start with whatever part of your week has the most paperwork attached.
Pick the area, say it's quoting. Create a project called Quoting and load it with the stuff a new starter would need on day one. Your price list. Two or three examples of quotes you were happy with. A won quote and a lost one if you have them. Anything about how you price and what you will and won't do.
Then write the instructions, which is just a plain description of how you want it to behave. Ours read like you'd brief a person. What we sell, what margin matters, what tone quotes go out in, what to always include, what to never promise. Writing that down takes twenty minutes and I'd bet most businesses have never done it for anything, which is half the value before the AI's even involved.
Then use it for every quote, every awkward pricing question, every "can you do it cheaper" email, straight into a chat inside that project and it answers with your prices, your tone and your rules, because it's read the filing cabinet.
Once the first one's working you'll see the shape of the rest. A project for a big customer, with every email thread and agreement in it. A project for a dispute, growing as it rumbles on. A project for the van fleet, the lease, the yard. Each one a cabinet that never forgets and never needs re-briefed.
Couple of practical things to keep in mind. This is a paid-version feature in both tools, so it's your twenty quid a month working for you. Keep each project to one subject rather than one giant everything-project, they work better narrow and update the cabinet when things change, new price list in, old one out, same as you'd do with a real one.
We're a fair way beyond this in our own business now, projects were the door the rest came through and it's the same door for everyone. An hour on your first one this week and you'll feel the difference by Friday.
Reply and tell me what your first project's going to be. I'll try and get a chance to tell you if I'd load it differently.
Andrew
Ps. The best first instruction to write in any project: "If something I've loaded contradicts something I ask for, tell me instead of guessing." Saves you from the machine politely working around your own out-of-date price list.