Ways to set AI up to help
Before AI can help well, you set it up. Left cold it guesses at your conventions every time; given the right context once, it builds the way your project already does. This page is about that groundwork: the memory, rules and context you put in place so the AI starts each task already knowing how your work is meant to go.
Project memory and rules
The first piece of setting AI up is giving it your project's memory and rules, the conventions, context and standards it should already know before it starts. Project memory and rules →
Custom slash commands and skills
Once your project memory is set, the next way to set AI up is to package the jobs you do often, so you are not explaining them from scratch every time. Custom slash commands and skills →
Path-scoped rules
After the always-on project memory above, there is a lighter-touch way to give Claude rules: ones that switch on only when they are relevant. Path-scoped rules →
Still to come
One thing is still to come, its own section. The tools and information Claude can reach, like MCP servers, a standard way to connect Claude to your files and other apps, so it is not working blind.
Say it another way
That last term, in plain words:
- MCP servers are like the sockets on a wall. They are a standard way to plug the AI into your other things, your files or another app, so it can actually use them instead of working blind.
This page is lighter than the others for now, with more sections still to come.
Part of Working with AI. The soft skills behind it: The soft skills of working with AI.
Why Claude. When this page carries tool-specific notes they use Claude Code, because it is one of the most widely used AI tools for building software. It is also what we build with day to day. The moves themselves are general and carry across to other capable AI tools.