Projects & Memory

Give Claude a permanent brain for your business.

Open a fresh chat, paste this, fill the brackets. Two rounds of edits, then save it — tonight's system prompt needs it.

I want you to help me write a "Sales Voice" prompt template I can reuse.

Here are the facts about my business and how I want to sound:

Business: roofing and solar installation in [CITY]
Company name: No Worries Roofing & Solar
Tagline: [YOUR TAGLINE]

How I want to sound:
- Like a contractor, not a marketer
- Direct, no fluff, no "I hope this email finds you well"
- Confident but not pushy
- Short — sub-100-word emails by default
- Subject lines that don't look like spam

What I never want to sound like:
- Corporate
- Like ChatGPT default tone
- Like I'm reading off a template

Write me a prompt template I can paste at the top of any chat, before
asking for a specific email. The template should set you up so that when
I say "write a follow-up to John," you already know who I am and how I sound.

Output the template in a code block so I can copy it cleanly.

• "Roofing & Solar Launch" Project — fully set up
• A system prompt that's the constitution for every chat
• 3+ documents uploaded to Project knowledge
• Mental model: when to use a new chat vs. new project

Notice anything annoying yet?

Every new chat, you've had to re-explain:

• Who you are
• What business you're in
• Who your customers are
• How you sound

That's about to stop.

Projects.

A container for one part of your life. You set it up once. Every chat inside it starts with that knowledge already loaded.

It's like giving Claude an employee handbook for your business that it reads before every conversation.

Context vs. memory.

People use these two words interchangeably — and they're closely related — but they're not exactly the same thing. The difference is worth 60 seconds.

Of the four layers ahead, three are memory — kept between chats. The fourth, chat context, is the live conversation: here now, gone when you close it.

Context = memory + this chat.

Every send, Claude stacks everything it kept — memory — on top of this live chat. That whole stack is the context it answers from.

Start a chat inside a Project → layers 1–3 are already there. Only the chat itself starts fresh.

Layer 1

System prompt = the constitution.

The rules Claude follows every time you open a chat in this Project. Who you are, what you sound like, what you want Claude to default to.

Here's the key part: every message you send, your system prompt gets loaded in front of it. You wrote it once and saved it — that's memory. Claude re-reads it on every single query — that's context. It's both. That's why it never forgets your tagline.

Write it once. Edit when things change. That's it.

Layer 2

Project knowledge = the file cabinet.

Documents you upload. Claude reads from them whenever they're useful.

Layer 3 · Project Memory

Project Memory — Claude's own notes on you.

Heads-up on the word: so far we've used "memory" loosely — anything Claude keeps. This layer is something more specific: a built-in feature, kept separately for each Project — so we'll call it Project Memory. In the app it's the "Memory" box at the top of your Project, above Instructions.

What it does: as you work, Claude quietly jots down what it learns — your role, how you like to work, what you're building — and reuses it in later chats. It's on by default, and it's separate for each Project.

Layer 4

Chat context = today's meeting.

What you've said in THIS specific chat. Built up as the conversation goes. Disappears when the chat closes.

This is the layer you've been using since Session 1. Now we add the three above it.

Create the Project.

1. Claude sidebar → Projects → New project
2. Name: Roofing & Solar Launch
3. Description: short — "Everything for launching [COMPANY] in [CITY]."
4. Create

Write the system prompt.

Open the Project's instructions area. Paste the template on the next two slides, fill in the brackets, then edit together until it sounds like you.

Grab your Sales Voice template first — it's one of the brackets.

You are helping me launch and run [COMPANY NAME], a new roofing and solar installation business in [CITY], [STATE].

WHO I AM
- I'm an experienced local contractor in [CITY], [STATE], with decades in the trades.
- I'm winding down my AC business to go all-in on [COMPANY NAME], my new roofing and solar company.
- Our tagline: [TAGLINE]
- This is a brand-new company — no sales history or past numbers to go on yet.

WHAT WE DO
- Roof installation and replacement
- Solar panel installation
- Bundled roof + solar projects (our sweet spot)

WHO WE SERVE
- Storm-damage homeowners — need a roof fast
- Planned-replacement homeowners — considering options
- Solar-curious homeowners — long sales cycle, ROI-driven
- Roof + solar bundle homeowners — already replacing roof, adding panels

Part 2 — how we sound and what to do — on the next slide.

HOW WE SOUND
[PASTE YOUR SALES VOICE TEMPLATE HERE —
 the one you saved as sales-voice-prompt.txt]

WHAT TO DO IN EVERY CHAT
- Default to short, scannable responses unless I ask for more.
- Use my company name and brand voice automatically.
- When I describe a customer, identify which of the 4 personas they map to.
- If I ask for a document (proposal, email, etc.), make it real and ready to send.
- If I'm wrong or about to do something dumb, tell me.

WHEN TO ASK QUESTIONS
- If I describe a job without enough info to estimate it, ask for the missing info before guessing.
- Otherwise default to producing the output, not to asking permission.

Save it. Read it aloud once. Cut anything that doesn't sound like you.

What goes in your system prompt

What goes in — and what doesn't.

The test: would you put it in a Google Doc shared with a vendor you trust but don't know personally? If yes, it's probably fine for Project knowledge.

No AI lab can claim "nobody will ever see this." But not all defaults are equal.

Everything lives in one folder.

Two different things, on purpose. The Project ("Roofing & Solar Launch") is Claude's brain in the cloud. This folder ("No Worries Roofing & Solar") is where the real files live on your computer — the notes, PDFs, and documents you'll make. Different names so you never mix them up.

1. Go to your Desktop
2. Right-click an empty spot → New → Folder
3. Name it exactly: No Worries Roofing & Solar

Later, when Claude can build a whole website for you, you'll just point it at a folder exactly like this one.

Upload knowledge.

Drag & drop into the Project knowledge area:

• Your rough pricing & target income (a quick note — ballpark is fine)
• 2–3 competitor websites — saved as PDFs first

Dragging a file in makes a copy. Change the file on your computer later? Claude won't see it until you drag the new version in again.

1. Open the page in your browser
2. Right-click anywhere → Print
3. Change destination to "Microsoft Print to PDF"
4. Save to your No Worries Roofing & Solar folder
5. Drag the PDF into Claude Project knowledge

You'll do this a lot. Memorize the move.

Your turn. Inside your Project.

Three separate prompts — send them one at a time and read each answer before the next.

1.  What's my tagline?

2.  Look at the competitor sites I uploaded.
    What's ONE thing each does well and ONE
    thing I should do differently?

3.  I have no sales history yet. Using my
    pricing and target income, how many roofs
    and solar jobs a month do I need to break
    even — and to hit my goal? Show the math,
    then flag the riskiest assumption.

Keep feeding the Project.

Anytime you make something new — a quote, a contract, a photo of a finished job — drag it in. The Project gets smarter every week.

In 6 months your Project is the closest thing you have to a chief of staff.

Update the system prompt as you grow.

New service? Add it. New pricing? Update it. New persona discovered? Document it.

Re-read your system prompt every couple of months. If it's out of date, Claude is following stale instructions.

Every AI tool keeps memory — but not the same way.

What you built tonight is how Claude Projects does it. That's not how it works everywhere. Before you trust any AI tool with your business, learn where it keeps your context — and what's permanent vs. just this chat.

Same question every time: where does this remember me, and what's permanent?

Upload one more document.

A contract template, an old quote, a referral letter — anything roofing/solar related. Get the Project richer.

Session 4 — Files & Artifacts

We use your Project to generate real working documents — a competitor pricing spreadsheet, a one-page service menu, and a proposal template.

Bring: nothing new. Everything's in your Project.