CLAUDE.md: The Project Notebook

Every Chat Starts Fresh

Here’s something that surprises everyone at first.

When you start a new chat, Claude doesn’t carry over the old conversation. Everything you explained yesterday, the style you wanted, the rules you agreed on… it’s not in this chat.

So you’d have to explain your project all over again. Every. Single. Time.

Unless you write it down.

The Notebook

Every project folder can have a special file called CLAUDE.md. Think of it as a notebook sitting on the desk in your project’s room.

Claude reads CLAUDE.md at the start of every chat, before you say a word.

Whatever you write in it, Claude already knows when the chat begins.

The .md at the end means it’s a Markdown file (plain text with a few simple symbols for headings and lists). You don’t need to learn Markdown. Claude writes it for you.

Making One: /init

Inside Claude Code, type:

/init

Claude looks around your folder and writes a first draft of CLAUDE.md for you. In an empty folder, the draft will be short. That’s fine, it grows with your project.

What Goes In It

Keep it short. A notebook full of rambling is hard to read, for Claude too.

Good things to put in:

• What the project is. “A personal website to show my art.”
• How it should look and feel. “Soft colors, lots of space, playful.”
• How you like to work. “Explain things in simple words. I’m not a programmer.”
• Rules to always follow. “Save a checkpoint after every change that works.”

Here’s what a small one might look like:

# My Website

A personal website to show my art and tell people about me.

## How I like to work
- I'm not a programmer. Explain things in simple words.
- Ask me before adding anything I didn't ask for.

## Look and feel
- Soft, warm colors. Lots of empty space. Playful, not corporate.

Write it once, and every future chat starts off knowing it. Later notes will add more rules to this notebook.

Changing It Later

You never have to open the file yourself. Just tell Claude:

Add this to CLAUDE.md: always make buttons rounded.

It edits the notebook for you. If you do want to read it, explorer . opens the folder, and it opens fine in Notepad.

Claude may also jot small notes to itself as it works. But CLAUDE.md is the notebook you control.

/init

Add this to CLAUDE.md: I'm new to all of this, so always explain what you're doing in simple words.