Your AI Has Amnesia. Here’s How to Fix It
Part 1 of 11: A practical guide to building a Claude that actually knows you.
You open Claude. You type a question. You get an answer. It’s a good answer, but it isn’t exactly perfect for your context. It’s sort of generic. You spend the next five to ten minutes making it a great answer. If this describes your experience with AI… I have a series for you!
Here’s the problem with how you’re using AI. Claude doesn’t know you. It doesn’t know your organization, your voice, your work context, your strategic priorities, or the seventeen decisions sitting on your desk. Every conversation starts from zero. Every session, Claude meets you for the first time.
That’s not a capability problem, it’s a problem with your setup.
Ditch the Default Mode
Today starts a very practical series of posts. I’m going to walk you through how to set up Claude to work for you and to get highly contextualized results. Most people use Claude the same way they use a search engine. They ask a question, get an answer, and on to the next question. For simple, one-off tasks, that works fine. We’re going to make it so much better.
The moment you’re using Claude for anything that requires real context like writing in your voice, thinking through your strategy, helping you brainstorm ideas, or building tools for your specific environment, the default mode breaks down.
You ask it to help you write something and the draft sounds like everyone and no one. It certainly doesn’t sound like you. You end up spending another hour rewriting it. You tell yourself AI is supposed to save time but you’re not sure it actually does.
The problem isn’t Claude’s capability. The problem is that you haven’t built a system.
What a System Actually Is
Claude Code allows you to create plain text Markdown files, called context files, that Claude reads before responding. Instead of re-explaining who you are every time you use it, these context files allow you document it all once. Claude works from that knowledge instead of starting from scratch.
The most powerful version of this is what’s called a modular architecture:
A master orchestrator file (CLAUDE.md) that tells Claude who you are at the highest level and routes every task to the right specialized file. It’s like a symphony conductor directing every tool to work on cue.
Specialized files for the different kinds of work you actually do are activated by the orchestrator. Things like writing, communication styles, coding, strategy, facilitation, etc… whatever your real workflow requires will be turned on and off by CLAUDE.md.
The result is a Claude that already knows your voice before you start writing. It already knows your context before you start strategizing and already knows all of your tools before you start building.
That’s a different product than what most people are using.
Why You Need an Orchestrator File?
You may be wondering, why don’t you just put everything into the CLAUDE.md file? Why create all of the specialized files? When you put everything in one file, Claude loads all of it every time. Your writing voice guidelines are sitting in memory when you’re debugging Python. Your coding standards are loaded when you’re drafting a Substack post. That’s not just inefficient, it creates noise that can actually degrade output quality as the context fills up with irrelevant instructions.
The modular system means you only load what the task needs. This costs less and speeds up your experience. Working on a writing project? Pull CLAUDE_WRITING.md. Spinning up a new tool? Pull CLAUDE_CODING.md. The orchestrator (CLAUDE.md) stays lean because it’s just routing logic and your core identity, not a 5,000-word instruction manual.
There’s also a maintenance argument. One giant file becomes a nightmare to update. When your writing voice evolves or your coding stack changes, you edit one focused file rather than hunting through an enormouse file hoping you got everything.
And there’s a cognitive clarity benefit for you as the builder. Each file has a single job. That forces you to think clearly about what actually belongs in “writing” vs. “context” vs. “coding.” That sort of foced discipline produces better instructions.
What This Series Builds
Over the next ten articles, we’re going to build a complete Claude setup. We will cover file by file and concept by concept. I’m not just going to give you my setup, we’re going to build your setup!
Each article explains one piece of the architecture. It will take you about 10-15 minute to set up each part. When you finish, you will have a great environment for Claude.
Article 02 — The master CLAUDE.md orchestrator
Article 03 — The living context document: CLAUDE_CONTEXT.md
Article 04 — The three-file writing system
Article 05 — Build a prompt library with the RIPEN framework
Article 06 — Two voices, one person: internal vs. public communication
Article 07 — Teach Claude your domain: building specialized files
Article 08 — Claude as developer: CLAUDE_CODING.md
Article 09 — Platform personas: tweets, decks, and output files
Article 10 — Adapting your setup as a faith-based leader
Article 11 — The complete system: maintenance, stacking, and team rollout
Each article includes the reasoning behind the design decision, a walkthrough of what to include, a fictional example so you can see the concept in action, and a blank starter template you copy and adapt for your context.
By the end, you’ll have a Claude setup that doesn’t just answer your questions. It will already know you.
One Thing Before We Start
My obligatory disclosure: This series is not about Claude becoming a replacement for your judgment, your relationships, or your work. The best Claude setup in the world doesn’t change what you’re trying to accomplish. It does eliminate the friction between you and the work that only you can do.
That’s the only kind of AI investment worth making.
Let’s build!
I’ve been using Claude code combined with an Obsidian vault full of markdown files and it has been tremendously helpful! Looking forward to this series!