Why a project, and what it's for

If you plan a wedding in loose chats, every chat starts from zero. You re-explain the date, the budget, the guest count and the fact that Riley's grandmother uses a wheelchair, and you do it again next week. Sooner or later one chat has the old budget and another has the new one.

A project fixes most of that. It's a workspace with its own chats, its own files and its own instructions. Anything in the instructions or the project's files applies to every chat inside it. Projects are on every plan, Free included. Free accounts can have up to five.

What a project remembers, and what it doesn't

This is the part people get wrong, so it's worth being exact.

• Project instructions apply to every chat in the project. That's where your standing rules go: who you are, how Claude should behave, what it must never do.
• Project knowledge is the files you add. Claude can use them in every chat in the project.
• Chats don't share with each other. Anthropic's help page says context isn't shared across chats in a project unless it's in the project knowledge. A decision you made in Tuesday's chat is invisible to Friday's chat unless you write it down somewhere Claude reads.
• Memory, if you have it on, helps. It's on by default on Free, Pro and Max, and each project has its own memory, separate from your other chats. You can see and edit what it holds in Settings. It's a summary, though, not a ledger. Don't trust it with the budget.

So the rule for this whole guide: anything that matters gets written into the sheet or a file. The sheet is the memory. Claude's memory is a convenience on top.

Where Claude helps

The jobs that eat a couple's evenings are the ones Claude does well:

• Research. Finding venues, photographers or caterers that match a long list of constraints, and saying why each one fits or doesn't.
• Writing. First drafts of inquiry emails, follow-ups, polite no-thank-yous, questions about a quote, the words on the website.
• Comparing. Turning three quotes in three formats into one table with the same columns, and pointing out what's missing from each.
• Reading. Going through a 12-page contract and telling you, in plain words, what happens if you cancel, if they cancel, or if you need to move the date.
• Keeping track. Reading the sheet and telling you what's overdue, what's waiting on whom and what money is due next month.
• Thinking out loud. Talking through a seating problem or a budget trade-off without either of you getting tired of it.

Where it doesn't belong

Some things stay with you, and chapter 7 goes through them in detail. In short:

• Anything sent in your name. Claude drafts. You read, edit and send.
• Money. Claude can add up the quotes. It doesn't pay anyone, and it doesn't hold card or bank details.
• Signing. Claude can explain a contract. It isn't a lawyer, and it can't tell you a contract is safe.
• Family. It can help you find the words. It shouldn't be the one deciding who sits where when the reason is a twenty-year-old argument.
• Final picks. Claude narrows the field. You choose.

There's a plainer reason too. Claude makes mistakes. Anthropic's own help page says not to rely on it as the only source of truth, and to check its sources, especially on high-stakes advice. A venue's capacity, a vendor's price, a license rule in your county: check each one at the source before it goes in the sheet as a fact.

Sam and Riley's setup (made up)

Sam and Riley are getting married next autumn. Sam handles the venue, food and music. Riley handles photography, flowers and stationery. They each have their own Claude account and their own project called "Our wedding". Both projects have the same instructions and read the same Google Sheet. On Sunday evenings they sit down for half an hour, ask Claude for the week's summary, and decide what's next.

The rest of this guide is how to get to that.