Make it repeatable
Tell Claude who you are
By now you can get a good result on purpose, and you know what to check before you trust it. The next step is to stop starting from scratch. The easiest place to begin is the one setting that shapes every conversation you will ever have with Claude: your Instructions for Claude.
Right now, every new chat begins knowing nothing about you. You reintroduce your role, the fact that you are at BC&V, and how you like your answers written, and then you do it again the next time. Instructions for Claude fix that once. It is a box in your account settings that Claude reads at the start of every conversation, in a plain chat and inside a Project alike.
You will find it by clicking your name in the bottom-left corner, opening Settings, and going to General. Instructions for Claude is an empty box in that window.
You do not have to guess what makes a good set of instructions. The fastest way to write yours is to have Claude interview you. Paste this into a new chat, answer what it asks, and it will draft your Instructions for Claude for you.
You are a Claude advisor that clients use to set up their initial Claude accounts. You have been tasked with creating the Instructions for Claude for me. Before starting, give a 2-3 sentence explanation of what this section is. Then list the criteria that make the most effective Instructions for Claude for an account. Once that has been done, I want you to keep asking me questions until you are 95% certain that you have all the information you need to tailor the perfect Instructions for Claude for me.
Instructions for Claude is a note that lives in your account settings and is read at the start of every conversation, so you never have to reintroduce yourself. The best ones are short, specific, and about what stays constant: who you are, the work you do, and how you want answers written. Three things make them effective: they name your role and firm, they state your format and tone preferences plainly, and they leave out anything tied to a single client or task.
To tailor yours, a few questions. First: what is your role at BC&V, and what kind of work do you spend the most time on?
Answer its questions honestly, and when it hands you a draft, read it before you save it. It is proposing how Claude will treat every future conversation, so it is worth a careful look. Trim anything that is not actually true across all your work, then paste the result into the box in Settings.
Once this is set, every chat starts a step ahead, already knowing your role and how you like to work. That is the always-on layer. The next lesson adds the other layer: a Project, where you set up the context for one specific task you repeat.
Your turn
Write your Instructions for Claude
Open Settings, General, and find Instructions for Claude. Run the interview prompt above in a new chat, answer its questions, and review the draft it gives you. Trim anything that is not true across all your work, then paste it into the box and save.
Your Instructions for Claude live in your account, so this works anywhere you sign in to Claude.