The part of a Claude project that tells Claude how to work and that applies in every chat of the project.
The project instructions hold what Claude should follow: goal, role, limits and maximum length, plus one sentence on what the project does when a detail is missing. You name every knowledge file there and say what it is for. Claude does not see the name and description of a project, so rules do not belong there.
Example from Module 4
Planning office [example]: The rule “Dates only from the notes. If the notes give none, it reads ‘Date open’.” is in the project instructions. The project lead no longer has to type it in on Fridays.
Module 4: “Your first agent as a project”. In the Werkbank course room, with sign-in.
Related terms
- Project knowledgeThe documents in a Claude project that Claude uses as background in every chat of the project.
- Rules fileA document with the permanent rules of a recurring task, in which every rule appears exactly once and hard rules are kept apart from guidance.
- Test caseAn input for a project where, before the run, you write down what must be in the result or missing from it.