The one habit worth building
What a CLAUDE.md is
Think of it as the onboarding note for you: a plain text file Claude reads at the start of every session, so you stop re-explaining yourself. Treat it as a living document. Update it as the project and your way of working change. It is not set and forget.
Without one, you re-explain yourself every time. With one, Claude already knows you want British English, no em dashes, a short plan before big jobs, and decks in PowerPoint not Word. Less repetition, better output, fewer surprises.
Global vs project
You do not need to memorise where any of this lives on disk. Just ask Claude and it will show you.
Applies to every project on your machine. It lives at ~/.claude/CLAUDE.md (the ~ is your home folder). Write this one first: your preferences, your voice, your tools.
Sits inside a specific folder, at ./CLAUDE.md or ./.claude/CLAUDE.md. Add one only when a particular job needs its own rules.
A starter you can copy
A working global CLAUDE.md for a designer. Copy it, drop it in, then change every line until it sounds like you. The quickest way: paste the whole thing into Claude and ask it to update your CLAUDE.md for you.
# CLAUDE.md
## About me
I'm a designer at Howatson+Company. I'm not a developer.
I work in decks, brand systems, image and video generation, and
written concepts. Explain things in plain language and skip the
engineering jargon.
## How I like you to work
- British English. No em dashes.
- Be concise. Lead with the answer, then the detail.
- When you're unsure, ask before you change files.
- Show me a short plan before any task that touches more than one file.
- Prefer markdown over Word documents unless I ask.
## Tools I use
- PowerPoint and Google Slides for decks
- Figma for design
- Slack, Outlook, Linear and Granola for work
- Image and video prompts (Nano Banana Pro, Seedance)
## House voice
Plain, direct, warm. Trim marketing language. Vary sentence length.Other things you may want to add to your CLAUDE.md:
How to add it
No commands to memorise. You can do all three by asking Claude, in plain English.
No commands to remember. In the Code tab, ask Claude to open your CLAUDE.md in an editor, and it opens the file so you can read or change it directly. If you do not have one yet, the next step creates it.
The simplest way to write your first one is to let Claude do it. Paste the starter above with a line like the one below, and Claude writes the file in the right place.
Create a global CLAUDE.md at ~/.claude/CLAUDE.md with the text below,
then I'll edit it to make it mine:
[paste the starter here]Run /memory. Your CLAUDE.md should now be listed. From here on, Claude reads it at the start of every session. To edit it later, open it from /memory or ask Claude to "add this to my CLAUDE.md".
Full reference: code.claude.com/docs/en/memory
The starter is a start, not a rule. Add the clients you work on, how you like feedback written, the names of your folders. Whenever something annoys you, that annoyance is usually a missing line in your CLAUDE.md.
Slack, Drive, Linear and more
Connect Claude to the services you live in, then ask it to search, read, and act across them in plain English. Claude works with the real data, so you never copy and paste between tabs.
Click the + button next to the message box, choose Connectors, pick a service, and follow the sign-in. Once it is connected, Claude can use it in your session. Manage or remove them later in Settings → Connectors.
Google Drive · Gmail · Calendar · Slack · Linear · Notion · GitHub · and more
Permission modes
Start with the most careful setting and give Claude more rope as you get comfortable. You can change this any time, right by the message box.
Claude checks with you first, every single time, before it does anything.
Claude can change files on its own, but still asks before it runs anything.
Claude shows you the plan first and waits for your yes before it starts.
Claude just gets on with it, with safety checks running quietly in the background.
When stuck
Make sure you are on Pro or higher. Sign out and back in. Update the app.
Sign out and back in, then check your subscription is active.
Remove it in Settings → Connectors and add it again. Check you authorised the right account.
Quit fully with ⌘ + Q and reopen.
You do not need these for general use. Only install them if a specific task asks for them.
Nothing is broken and nothing is lost: your work is saved in the folder. Limits reset on their own, so take a break and come back to it.
Ask Claude itself. Type something like "how do I open a folder in here?" straight into the message box. It knows the app.