Claude project instructions for teams

Give repeatable work a shared brief: what Claude should produce, which facts to use, and what a colleague should check. Start with the example below, adapt it to your team, and test it before sharing the project.

Build your team's brief

Use the guided instructions builder to describe the job, audience, reference facts, working rules and output format. Choose what should happen when a fact is missing. Review and edit the draft, then copy it or download the Markdown file. Prefer writing directly? Use the editable template instead.

Add three small test cases when you are ready: an ordinary request, a request with missing facts, and one that asks Claude to break a rule. Write the expected behaviour yourself; the cards are a checklist for your review.

A project brief you can copy

This fictional example helps an operations team prepare its weekly service report. Replace the bracketed parts, and keep that week's figures in the current reference material rather than permanently baking them into the instructions.

# Weekly service report
Help [team name] draft a weekly service report for [audience].

Working rules:
- Use the supplied report period and figures. Keep opened and closed counts separate.
- If a figure, baseline or definition is missing, label it Unknown and name the source needed.
- Show arithmetic and units for any calculated measure.
- Do not describe closed/opened as a cohort resolution rate.
- Do not infer backlog change from opened and closed counts alone.
- Do not claim the report was sent or approved, or promise follow-up, unless supplied facts establish it.

Allowed action: draft a report for human review.
Output: a table of figures, followed by three short bullets covering observations, missing information and proposed next checks.

Reference material: [approved weekly report source and metric definitions].

Put stable working rules in the instructions. Keep changing figures, dates and approved source documents in the material you supply for the task. For rules about which company data may be used, start with your company AI policy.

Add the brief to Claude

This guide covers Claude chat projects. Open Projects, create or choose a project, and select Set project instructions. Paste your reviewed brief and select Save instructions. These instructions apply to chats within that project.

Add approved reference documents to the project's knowledge area. On Team and Enterprise, project sharing is available where the administrator permits it: Can view lets colleagues use the project without editing it; Can edit permits changes to instructions and knowledge. Give editing access to the colleagues maintaining the brief.

Check the project's sharing before adding company material. See Claude's project setup and sharing guide for current controls.

Test the instructions before the team uses them

Try each request in a fresh project chat and compare the answer with your card. Keep the period, reference facts and other settings the same when checking a revision. Record failures and retries as well as usable answers.

Fictional reference facts: week ending 9 October 2026; 12 tickets opened and 9 closed. No previous-week figures or total backlog are supplied.

Edit these cards to fit your real work. If an answer fails, tighten the relevant instruction or reference material, then repeat all three checks.

Keep the brief useful as the team changes

Name a maintainer, label the instruction version, and keep the actual text in controlled team storage. Review it when the job, policy, reference material or model setup changes. Leave a short note explaining what changed and which tests you reran.

You can manage this with a shared document and review calendar. In Vaze Environment, keep the instruction record's owner, version, source link and next review beside the workflow it supports. Use the comparison guide when recording tests of two setups. Keep the owner, version, source and next review together in Vaze.

Choosing a team plan as well? The Claude Team vs ChatGPT Business cost calculator compares seat estimates and plan fit.

Common questions

Are project instructions the same as the files I upload?

They serve different purposes. Instructions describe how you want Claude to work; project knowledge supplies reference material. Keep stable rules and changing facts clearly separated so your team can review both.

Can I use the brief without the builder?

Yes. Copy the example into a shared document, edit it, and use the same three test cases. The builder helps organise and export a draft; your team decides whether the instructions and answers are suitable.

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