Chapter 20: Designing the Workspace#

The installer’s draft is a draft#

If you followed Chapter 16, /setup interviewed you and wrote a CLAUDE.md plus eleven folders. That gets you a solid scaffold in five minutes. This chapter is how to make it genuinely yours — because the gap between a generic CLAUDE.md and a sharp one is the gap between a tool and a teammate. (Not installed yet? Chapter 16 has the three commands. Go run them; this chapter will make more sense with the result in front of you.)

What a good CLAUDE.md contains#

Open yours and check it against this list. Each section earns its place by doing a job:

• Who I am — one or two lines. Role, what this folder is for.
• What I own — the three to six things you are responsible for end-to-end. This is what lets Claude tell your problem from someone else’s.
• Key people — names, roles, and working styles. “Prefers the trade-off named up front” is the kind of note that makes call prep and drafts land.
• How to help me — your operating instructions: default to drafting rather than asking, match my voice, short paragraphs, no hedging. This is the section Claude leans on most.
• Hard rules — the nevers. Never mix one client’s context into another’s draft. Never send anything external without showing me first. These flow into everything.
• Active workstreams — what you are working on right now. More on this block in a moment, because it is special.
• The folder map — one line per folder so Claude never has to ask where something goes.

Keep the whole thing to roughly a page. Write it like a briefing for a sharp new hire, not like documentation. If you cannot say why a line is there, it should not be.

The one block that changes daily#

Here is a design trick that keeps your CLAUDE.md current without you ever hand-editing it. Most of the file changes rarely — your role, your rules, your people. One section changes constantly: what you are working on right now. So give that section clear markers, and let the end-of-day skill rewrite just that block while leaving the rest of the file alone:

In your CLAUDE.md:

## Active Workstreams
<!-- BEGIN ACTIVE WORKSTREAMS -->
<!-- /daily-log rewrites this block. If it's empty, run /daily-log. -->
- Pricing refresh for the Q3 launch (draft due next week)
- Hiring: two final-round candidates in play
<!-- END ACTIVE WORKSTREAMS -->

The markers are just comments — invisible when the file is read as context, but they tell the skill exactly where its writing territory begins and ends. Your stable rules stay untouched; the churn lives in its fenced-off block. This one pattern is why my CLAUDE.md is always current even though I have not manually updated it in months.

What to keep out#

CLAUDE.md is loaded every session, so every line taxes every run. Keep freeloaders out:

• Anything needed rarely. Relevant one session in twenty? It belongs in a folder or in memory, not here.
• Long reference material. Do not paste your brand guide; point to the Brand/ folder.
• Secrets. API keys and passwords never go in this file. Ever.
• Finished projects. Last quarter’s wrapped workstream is noise now. Delete it during your monthly prune.

The recurring question — “does this go in CLAUDE.md or somewhere else?” — has a one-line answer: needed almost every session → this file. Needed sometimes → memory. The record of what happened → the folders. When in doubt, keep the file lean. An under-stuffed Brain costs you a little re-explaining; an over-stuffed one costs you on every single run.

The eleven folders, and why they are these eleven#

The folders /setup creates are not arbitrary — each one is a known place where a skill reads or writes, so no command ever has to ask “where should this go?”

Two design choices in that table deserve a highlight. First, the Brain Dump/ and Daily Log/ pair enforces the rule from Chapter 18: capturing and organizing are different acts, and you should never have to do both at once. Capture all day; let one command do the sorting at the end. Second, Voice Samples/ and Brand/ are the two folders only you can fill — make the first deposit on day one, because drafting skills read them, and an empty folder means generic output.

Resist adding a twelfth folder in week one. Eleven covers more than it looks like it does, and an early urge for a new folder is usually a sign something belongs inside an existing one. Add a folder only when a real workflow has nowhere to write — and when you do, give it a README saying what it is for.

Pro tips#

1. Read your CLAUDE.md out loud once. Anywhere it sounds like software documentation instead of you briefing a colleague, rewrite that line.
2. Seed Voice Samples/ before you judge the drafting skills. They are only as good as what you give them to learn from.
3. Prune on the first of the month. Calendar reminder. Ten minutes. It is the single highest-return maintenance habit in this whole part.