Claude Projects explained: how to use them at work

What's inside a project

• Project knowledge: documents, text and other files you upload. Claude reads them as background for every chat in the project. On paid plans, when the files get too large to read at once, Claude switches to searching them, which Anthropic says expands capacity by up to ten times.
• Project instructions: how Claude should work in this project: the audience, the tone, the format, what to avoid.
• Its own chats: the conversations you have inside it, kept together and apart from your other chats.

A worked example: one client, one project

Illustration: a made-up business. Jordan is an account manager at a 10-person social media agency. Every Friday they write a status report for each of four clients, and every week they re-upload the same brief and explain the same targets.

They create a project called "Harbor Coffee" and add:

• Files: the signed scope of work, the brand guidelines, the quarter's targets (followers, engagement rate, two campaigns) and the last four reports.
• Instructions (6 lines): "The client is Harbor Coffee's marketing lead, who reads on a phone. Status first: on track, at risk or off track, with the reason. Compare every metric to the target in the targets file. Never promise dates not in the scope. Plain English, no agency jargon. Under 250 words."

Now each Friday Jordan opens the project, pastes the week's numbers and notes, and asks for the report. The draft already uses the right targets and tone. They repeat the setup for the other three clients: four projects, four Friday reports that each take about ten minutes instead of thirty.

What Jordan notices by week three: the report rules ("status first", "compare to target") are the same in all four projects. Changing one means editing four. That's the cue for a skill, below.

Set up your first project

1. Pick work you return to weekly, such as one client, one product or one recurring report.
2. Create the project in Claude and give it the name you'd use for the folder.
3. Upload three to five files the work depends on. Remove anything you shouldn't share with an AI service; see what not to paste.
4. Write five or six lines of instructions: who reads the result, what good looks like, what to avoid.
5. Run last week's task inside it and compare with what you sent. Fix the instructions, not the draft.

Projects vs chats vs skills

A project is a place; a skill is a method. Jordan keeps the four client projects for their files, and moves the report rules into one skill. Claude picks the skill from the request ("weekly report for Harbor Coffee") in whichever project they're in. Custom instructions vs Projects vs skills compares all three, in Claude and ChatGPT.

When your team works on the same clients

On Free, Pro, Max and Ultra, a project is yours alone. Once two account managers serve the same client, or a colleague covers your holiday, everyone needs the same files and the same report rules. How to get your team to use AI the same way covers that next step.

The AI skill below is the report method Jordan ended up with: status and reason first, done and next, metrics against target, and what the client must do. Your AI writes the client report from your notes in any project.

Questions

What are Claude Projects?

Workspaces inside Claude, each with its own chat history, uploaded files (project knowledge) and instructions. Every chat you start inside a project sees those files and instructions, so you don't upload or explain them again.

Are Claude Projects free?

Yes. Projects are on every plan; the Free plan allows up to five. Paid plans can hold more project knowledge, because Claude switches to searching the files when they get large.

Claude Projects vs chats: what's the difference?

A plain chat starts from nothing but your profile preferences. A chat inside a project starts with the project's files and instructions. Use a plain chat for one-off questions, and a project for work you come back to.

Can I share a Claude project with a colleague?

On Claude Team and Enterprise, yes: with people, groups or the whole organization, as view-only or edit. On Free, Pro, Max and Ultra, projects aren't shared.