Organize Pro Work with Claude Projects

Claude Projects are self-contained workspaces that bundle uploaded documents, custom instructions, and chat history into reusable contexts. This means you can set up a project once with your team guidelines, brand standards, or project-specific files, then every conversation within that project automatically includes all that context.

To create a project, navigate to claude.ai/projects and click "+ New Project." Give it a name and description (these are for your reference only), then choose visibility settings if you're on a Team or Enterprise plan. From the project's main page, you'll see the knowledge base panel on the right side. Click the "+" button to upload documents, code, PDFs, or text files-any files you upload become automatically available to Claude in all conversations within that project.

Next, establish project instructions by clicking "Set project instructions." This is where you define how Claude should behave specifically for this project. For example, a marketing team might add instructions like "Always use brand voice guidelines documented in the uploaded brand book, format all campaign copy in markdown, and suggest 3 alternative headlines for each output." These instructions only apply to chats within this specific project, keeping your workflows separate and focused.

Professional example: A consulting firm creates a "Client X Strategy" project. They upload the client's business documents, competitive analysis, and internal strategy templates. They set project instructions requesting analysis in a specific format with executive summaries. Every team member working on Client X chats within this project, ensuring consistent context and baseline knowledge without repeating "Here's our approach" in every message. Over months, the project accumulates valuable context and conversation history that becomes a reference point for ongoing work.

Projects automatically handle context expansion on paid plans using RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) when your knowledge base grows large, so you can keep adding resources without worrying about context limits. Team and Enterprise users can share projects with colleagues, controlling whether members can view only or also edit instructions and knowledge.