# STEP 6: TEACH CLAUDE WHO YOU ARE, PERMANENTLY **Goal:** Their profile instructions are written, saved, and visibly working. Every chat they ever start already knows them. **Time:** 12 minutes. --- ## THE FRAME One line: "Everything so far lives in the Project. This next part follows you everywhere, including a chat you start on your phone at midnight." --- ## WHAT GOES IN, AND WHY Anthropic's guidance on profile instructions names four things they should cover. Use these as your checklist. You gathered all four in Step 5. 1. **Preferred approaches and methods.** How they want work done. 2. **Common terms and concepts they use.** Their vocabulary. 3. **Typical scenarios they encounter.** What they ask for over and over. 4. **General communication instructions.** How to talk to them. Most people write instructions that cover only the fourth one, then wonder why nothing much changed. Cover all four. --- ## THE FOUR RULES FOR WRITING IT These come from Anthropic's published prompting guidance and they are the difference between instructions that work and instructions that decorate a settings page. **Rule 1: Behavioral, not descriptive.** Claude cannot act on an adjective. "I am a direct person" changes nothing. "Open with the answer in the first sentence, then the reasoning. No preamble." changes everything. Every line must be something Claude can do or not do. **Rule 2: Say what to do, not what to avoid.** This is explicit in the guidance and most people get it backwards. Instead of "do not be formal", write "write the way I would text a colleague I like". Instead of "never use bullet points", write "answer in flowing paragraphs". When they gave you a "never do this" in the interview, translate it into the positive behavior that replaces it before it goes in. **Rule 3: Give the reason.** The guidance is clear that explaining why an instruction exists produces better results than the bare instruction, because the reason generalizes to situations the instruction never anticipated. "Never use ellipses" is weak. "My responses get read aloud, so never use ellipses" is strong. So write "I present to boards, so give me the number and the source before the narrative" rather than "be concise". **Rule 4: Show, do not describe.** Examples steer tone more reliably than any description of tone. You have their real writing samples from Step 5. Put a short one directly into the instructions as an example of how they sound. One good sample beats three paragraphs of adjectives. --- ## WRITE IT FOR THEM Do not hand them a blank box. You have their document, their samples, what you found on their site, and everything you read in Step 2. Write the whole thing and hand them finished text to paste. **Length: under 250 words.** Long instructions get diluted and slow every answer they will ever get. If it is running long, cut the descriptions and keep the behaviors. **Shape it roughly like this,** in their voice, first person: - Two lines on who they are and what the business does, with the reason it matters - One line on what they are working toward right now - The three or four things they ask for most, and how each should be handled - Their vocabulary, the words to use and the words to replace - Three or four behavioral lines on how to communicate, each with its reason - One short writing sample, marked as an example of their voice **Then apply the golden rule from the guidance:** would a new employee who has never met this person be able to follow these instructions without asking a question? Read it back and check. Anything that would confuse them, rewrite. --- ## THE PASTE One instruction at a time, waiting between each. 1. Open Settings. Click their name in the bottom left corner, then Settings. On a phone it is under the menu. 2. Go to Profile. Direct link: claude.ai/settings/profile. 3. Find the box for personal preferences, the one about how Claude should respond. 4. Paste. Save. --- ## THE PROOF, AND THIS ONE MATTERS Do not accept "saved it". Make them feel it. Have them open a **brand new chat**, completely fresh, nothing to do with this one, and ask something ordinary from their real work. Their choice of question. Tell them exactly what to watch for: the answer should arrive already knowing their business, in their format, without them setting anything up. Have them report back. - **It worked:** name precisely what changed. "That answer assumed you sell to operators, it led with the number, and it skipped the preamble. You did not tell it any of that in that chat." - **It did not:** almost always it went into a Project instructions box instead of profile settings, or it was typed and never saved. Walk the path again slowly. Do not move on until it works. --- ## TUNE IT ONCE After the proof, ask one question: **"What would you change about how that answer came out?"** Whatever they say, edit the instructions right there and have them re-save. One round of this teaches them the instructions are editable, which is the thing that keeps the setup alive after you are gone. --- ## IF THEY ARE ON A WORK ACCOUNT Team and Enterprise accounts can also carry organization instructions set by an admin, sitting alongside theirs. Mention it only if something behaves oddly. --- ## PROOF GATE They have run a fresh chat, unrelated to this one, reported back something that could only happen if the instructions took hold, and made one edit. --- ## END OF SESSION 2 1. Show the progress line. 2. Open `https://claudefoundersguide.com/setup/status-card.md` and give them the completed card, making clear it is only for if they leave and come back. 3. Say what is left in one sentence: "Last sitting is the one where it starts working when you are not looking." 4. Ask if they want to continue now or stop. Either is fine. If continuing, go straight into Step 7 in the same message. --- ## NEXT When they are ready for the next step, open `https://claudefoundersguide.com/setup/06-brief-design.md`. --- ## WHERE THESE RULES CAME FROM For whoever maintains this file. The four content buckets come from Anthropic's help centre article on personalization features. The four writing rules come from Anthropic's published prompting best practices: be clear and direct, add context and motivation behind instructions, tell Claude what to do instead of what not to do, and use examples as the most reliable way to steer tone and format. The golden rule about the colleague who lacks context is from the same source.