How to Set Up Claude: Skills, Projects, Folders, and Chat
I get asked all the time how I have Claude set up, like there's one right configuration I could hand over and everything would click. There isn't. And the longer I've used it across two brands and a full stack of offers, the more I've realized that's the wrong question to be asking in the first place.
The setup was never the thing. The thing is knowing what kind of work you're doing before you start. A quick question and a full launch are not the same job, so they don't belong in the same place. Once you can tell your work apart, the way to run it becomes obvious.
There are really only four ways to work with Claude, and I use all of them depending on what's in front of me. Here they are, and here's exactly when I reach for each one.
The four containers
Think of these as four boxes to put work into. Every task you'd hand to Claude fits cleanly into one of them. The trick is knowing which box before you start, not after.
Skill — the thing you'd teach a team member
A capability you use over and over. You build it once, then call it whenever you need it. It carries your rules with it every single time.
Project — the one big thing with many parts
A place that holds context for one specific effort. Everything you load stays loaded across every chat inside it, and it doesn't bleed into your other work.
Folder — when the work lives in files
You point Claude at files on your computer, it works from them, and it hands files back. Useful when the input and the output are both documents.
Chat — the quick one-off
Nothing to build, nothing to keep. A question, a rewrite, a gut check. You get your answer and you move on with your day.
That's the whole map. Now let's talk about the two that matter most for creators, because this is where people waste the most time picking wrong.
Skills are for the work you'd teach someone
My test is simple. If I could sit a new team member down and walk them through how I do something, then that something should be a skill.
My best example is a sales page. I build a lot of them, and there's a right way to do it for my brand. The colors are set, the voice is set, and there's a structure I follow every time because it converts. I taught all of that to a skill once, and now when I need a page, I call the skill and it already knows the rules.
This is where the "less context is better" crowd gets it backwards. They'll tell you that loading Claude up with too much information makes it boring and predictable, and that a lighter setup gives you more creative answers.
That might hold up for open-ended brainstorming, but it falls apart the moment you're running a brand.
"When I build a sales page, I don't want a surprise. I want my brand. Strip out the colors and the voice and the structure, and you don't get a more creative page. You get a worse one."
— Dr. Destini CoppThe context is the whole point. My brand guide, my voice rules, and the layout that actually works aren't clutter slowing Claude down. They're the difference between a page I can publish and a page I have to rewrite from scratch.
So here's where the confusion comes from, and it's worth clearing up. There's a real difference between context that's scoped and context that's dumped.
Scoped context is tied to one job. My voice rules live inside my sales page skill and show up when I write a sales page, so they help every single time.
Dumped context is everything you own piled into one place and read on every task whether it's relevant or not. That's the setup that goes in circles, and it's what people are actually complaining about when they say "too much context." They're right about the problem, but they've got the cause wrong.
Context doesn't hurt when it's matched to the work. It hurts when it's dumped on top of everything. A skill scopes the context to one job, which is exactly why skills carry heavy rules well.
So don't let anyone talk you out of your brand guides. If you've built voice rules and frameworks you actually use, keep them. Just put them where they belong, inside the skill that needs them.
Projects are for one big thing with a lot of moving parts
A project works differently than a skill. A skill is something you do. A project is a thing you're working on, and it holds all the context for that one effort in a single place.
Take a summit. When I'm running one, there's a mountain of connected pieces that all belong to that one event, including the theme, the speakers, the registration page, the attendee emails, and the speaker comms. Every bit of it needs to stay in the room with me while I work.
So I make a project for the summit and load it all in. Now every chat inside that project already knows what event we're talking about. I don't re-explain the theme in chat number nine, and I don't paste the speaker list again. It's just there.
And here's the part that matters. That summit context stays inside the summit project. It doesn't leak into my newsletter work or my next launch. Each project is its own room with the door closed.
That's the line between the two. You write a sales page for many different offers, so the sales page is a skill. A summit is one specific event with its own theme, its own speakers, and its own everything, so the summit is a project.
Could you teach it to someone as a repeatable how-to? That's a skill. Is it one specific thing with its own facts, people, and pieces? That's a project.
When to use a folder or plain chat
The last two are the ones people forget, but they matter just as much.
Folders make sense when the work is genuinely file-based. You've got a messy spreadsheet, or a stack of documents you need cleaned up and handed back as files. The input is files and the output is files, and that's a folder job. It's not my default for writing, but for that kind of work it's the right tool.
Chat is for everything small, like a fast question, a quick rewrite of one paragraph, or a "does this sound right" gut check. There's nothing to build and nowhere to keep it, so there's no reason to spin up a skill or a project. You'd be putting on a coat to walk to the mailbox.
The mistake I see is people forcing the small stuff into a big container because they think they're supposed to. You are not slowing Claude down by using plain chat for a plain question. You're matching the tool to the job, which is the entire game.
Match your work to the container
Every "here's the new way" post treats setup like a trend you have to keep up with. Folders are out, skills are in, delete your files, and so on. It keeps you rebuilding instead of working.
The four containers don't go out of style, because they're not a trend. They're just a way to sort work. Repeatable and teachable goes in a skill. One big specific effort goes in a project. File-based work goes in a folder. Quick and disposable goes in chat.
Stop asking how to set up Claude. Start asking what kind of work this is. Answer that, and the container is obvious.
If you want one place to start, pick the thing you do most often, whether that's the email you write every week or the kind of post you make on repeat. Turn that into a skill, rules and all. That one build will teach you more about working with Claude than any setup guide, including this one.
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Use a skill for work you repeat and could teach to someone else, like writing a sales page or a newsletter. Use a project for one specific thing with a lot of moving parts, like a summit or a launch, where the context needs to stay loaded across many chats.
Not if the context is scoped to the task. A pile of unrelated files dumped into every session hurts. But context tied to one job, like your brand voice inside a sales page skill, makes the output better and more on brand, not more generic.
Use plain chat for quick one-offs. A fast question, a quick rewrite, a fact you need. Nothing to build, nothing to keep. If you would not save it, it belongs in chat.
Sometimes. Folders make sense when you are working from files that live on your computer and producing files back. For most creator work, skills and projects are cleaner. Folders are a tool, not the default.
Pick one thing you do over and over, like writing a certain kind of email, and turn it into a skill. That single skill will teach you more about how Claude works than any setup guide.
