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Every session with Claude starts from nothing unless you arrange otherwise. Projects and standing instructions are how you arrange otherwise: the rules of the matter, the rules of your practice and the reference material you rely on, set up once and applied every time. This guide sets them up and explains the memory that comes with them.
Two things called a project
The word is used for two different things, and it helps to keep them apart.
A Cowork project lives on your computer. It holds one or more local folders, standing instructions, reference links, and a memory store that persists between sessions. It is not synced to your account and cannot be shared. This is the project you made in Guide 2 for the matter.
A claude.ai project lives in your Claude account. It holds a knowledge base of uploaded documents and a set of instructions, and every chat inside it can draw on both. It cannot hold local folders. On the Team and Enterprise plans it can be shared with colleagues, with view or edit rights.
The two can be linked: a Cowork project can draw on the knowledge of a claude.ai project, without merging them.
The division of labour that works: a Cowork project for each matter, holding the matter folder; a claude.ai project, or two, for the standing reference material that every matter needs; and global instructions for the rules that apply to everything.
Step 1 — Global instructions for Cowork
These apply to every Cowork session, in every project. Open Settings, choose Cowork, click Edit next to Global instructions, type, and Save.
Put here only what is true of all your work. A made-up example:
I am an advocate at the Johannesburg Bar. South African law applies unless I say otherwise.
Cite a case only if the judgment is in the matter's research folder. If it is not, say so. Never supply a citation from memory.
Quote only words that appear in the source, in that order, with a paragraph or page reference.
If you are not sure, say so and mark the point [TO CONFIRM]. Do not fill a gap with something plausible.
Do not read, refer to or move anything outside the connected folder.
Documents: Arial 12, justified, live paragraph numbering, no author name in the file properties.
Be brief. No summaries of what you have just done unless I ask.
Write it so that a colleague could read it and understand what you have told the machine. That is also the test of whether it is clear enough for Claude.
Step 2 — A claude.ai project for reference material
Some material is needed in every matter: the rules of the courts you appear in, the practice directives, a style guide, the checking rules from Guide 9. That material belongs in a claude.ai project, where it is uploaded once and available to every chat inside the project.
Go to Projects in the app (or claude.ai/projects), choose New project, and give it a name and description. On the project page, use the + in the knowledge section to add the documents. Then click Set project instructions and write the instructions for that project, for example that the documents are reference material to be quoted only word for word and with a rule or paragraph number.
Two limits to know. The knowledge base has a capacity; on the paid plans, when it fills, the project switches to a mode in which Claude searches the documents rather than reading all of them at once, which is fine for reference material and less good for a record. And a project full of scanned documents that have not been made readable (Guide 3) is a project full of documents Claude thinks it has read. Convert first, then upload.
Step 3 — Link the reference project to the matter project
Open the matter’s Cowork project settings. Among the things a Cowork project can hold is a list of projects from Chat: add the reference project there. Sessions in the matter project can now draw on the rules of court and the style guide without you uploading them again.
You can also add reference links to the Cowork project: the address of a court’s practice directive page, for example, so that Claude can consult the current version.
Step 4 — Understand the memory
Both kinds of project have a memory. A Cowork project keeps a store of what Claude learnt in earlier sessions on that project. A claude.ai project keeps its own memory, separate from ordinary chats. Memory is on by default on the consumer plans.
Memory is useful: the second session on a matter does not need to be told again where the research folder is or how you like a chronology laid out. It also needs managing. Three habits.
Keep one project per matter, so that what Claude remembers about one client’s matter never sits in the same store as another’s. Read what the project has remembered from time to time, and correct it; a wrong “fact” in memory is repeated with confidence. And when a matter is closed, archive the Cowork project: that removes its instructions and memory from the app, and leaves the folder and files exactly where they were.
Step 5 — Instructions are not guarantees
A rule in the instructions is followed most of the time. It is not followed all of the time. Claude can restate your rule about quotations accurately and then, several answers later, produce a quotation that is not in the judgment. “I told it not to invent citations” is not a checking step.
So the practice is belt and braces. The rule goes in the instructions, and for any task where it matters it is repeated in the request: “Using only the judgments in research/, and quoting only words that appear in them, …”. The instruction sets the standard; the repetition catches the moment; and the checking routine in Guide 9 assumes both will sometimes fail.
Keeping it under control
A few habits that prevent most of the trouble. One Cowork project per matter, always, on that matter’s folder and nothing wider. Reference material in a separate project, so that it is never mistaken for the record. Instructions short enough to read in a minute. And nothing connected to your email, your whole Documents folder or a filing system because the option was there. The ability to connect something is not a reason to.
Check yourself
At the end of this guide you should have global instructions saved under Settings > Cowork; a claude.ai project holding your standing reference material, with its own instructions; that project linked to the matter’s Cowork project; and a habit of repeating the important rule in the request whenever the task is one where a wrong citation or quotation would matter.
Sources: Anthropic documentation, Organize work with projects; support articles, Get started with Claude Cowork, How can I create and manage projects (as at 24 September 2026).