The same prompt, twice.
Once in a blank chat. Once inside a project holding your strategy, your voice and last year's report. Same words in, and nothing like the same thing out.
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Try it right here ↓Free to read. The try-it part runs on a free account.
A project is a folder inside Claude or ChatGPT that holds your organisation's key documents, like your strategy, reports and style guide, so the AI can reach for them when it needs them. It turns a chat window into a contextually aware ecosystem. Ask for a fundraising email in a bare chat and you get a template anyone could have written. Ask inside a project and you get something 80% there.
Picture an intern on their first day: bright, motivated, has read every book and every website, and knows nothing about your organisation beyond what is public. Send them off to work without an induction and the work will be poor, and it will not be their fault. A project is the induction.
The prompt is the how: the instructions. The context is the what: the material to work with. Most people polish the how and starve the what, and the what matters at least as much.
One mechanical fact shapes how you build one. The instructions field is read on every single message, which is why guardrails belong there. An uploaded file is not: when a question arrives it pulls three to five snippets out of your files, the ones it judges relevant. Instructions always on, files on demand.
Once in a blank chat. Once inside a project holding your strategy, your voice and last year's report. Same words in, and nothing like the same thing out.
The fastest way to fill a project is to be interviewed. It asks one question at a time, then writes your context files for you.
First the shelf: eight projects and what actually goes in each one. Then the prompts that build whichever one you picked.
Different work wants different context, and the half people miss is what to leave out. Take the instructions, change the words in brackets, and you have started.
Start with three of them. Six documents are waiting: file each one into every project it belongs in, and see which ones belong in none.
Drag it onto the project it belongs in.
Drag a document onto every project it belongs in. Some belong in more than one. Two belong in none.
Start hereThe one everyone shares, and the one every other project copies its context down from.
What goes in it
What to leave out
Program detail. A document on how to cook chickpeas belongs in the program project, not in the one the whole organisation shares.
What changes
Every conversation starts knowing who you are. The twenty questions it used to ask before doing any work are already answered, and it signs off the way you sign off.
In ChatGPT, set the memory to project only as you create it. The setting cannot be changed afterwards, so changing your mind means deleting the project and starting again. Claude keeps a project's memory inside it either way.
The instructions to paste
We are [organisation], a [what you do] working with [who you work with] in [where]. Our mission is [mission]. Our priorities this year are [two or three]. The files in this project are the source of truth about us. Where a file and an assumption disagree, the file wins. Never invent a statistic, a quote or a program name: if it is not in the files, ask me. ## Output format Australian English. **Never use em dashes. Use a comma or a full stop instead.** Concise, no fluff. Be critical: push on the idea and challenge me rather than agreeing. You will not hurt my feelings. Before anything longer than a paragraph, ask me the one question that would most change what you write.
If you have a strategic plan, that is the file. If you do not, go to your About page, print it to PDF, and upload that one thing. Two files is a good week one: the plan and your communication guidelines.
What never goes in, whichever project it is: case notes, health or personal information, anything with a person's name on it they did not agree to, and anything your AI policy has not cleared. If you need the numbers without the people, swap the names for codes and keep the key somewhere else.
The test that proves it is worth doing, the one that writes your instructions, the interview that fills it, and the pass that keeps it lean.
Run the first one twice. It is the whole argument in two minutes.
Draft a fundraising email for our current appeal.
Run this once in a temporary chat with no memory, and once inside a project holding your documents. Put the two outputs side by side. That difference is what context is worth.
The guide is free to read. This part is a working exercise, and a free account opens it and keeps your progress across the Hub.
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