The Starter Pack: set up Claude properly

Get the free plugin

The AI Amplified plugin interviews you and writes your six context documents for you, so Claude knows your role, your business and how you write before you ask it for anything. It lives in our free community, next to the walkthrough video "Turn Claude into a Chief of Staff in an hour". Free account, name and email, thirty seconds.

Get the free plugin →

1. Claim it. Join the free community with the button above. The plugin and the walkthrough are pinned at the top.
2. Upload it. In the Claude desktop app, open Customize, then Plugins, and upload the plugin file.
3. Run it. Create a project pointed at one folder on your computer, then run the setup. It asks the questions; you talk; it writes the documents.

Before you type a word: the safety pass

Ten minutes. Do it before you connect anything or paste anything in.

Privacy Settings, then Privacy

• "Help improve our AI models": off. Grey, not blue. Your work should not be training anything.
• "Location metadata": off. Claude doesn't need to know where you are to read a spreadsheet.

Account

• Check active sessions. If there's a device you don't recognise, log it out.
• Notifications: off. You decide when you look at it, not the other way round.

Capabilities

• "Load tools when needed": on. Tools on standby eat your usage.
• Memory. If you handle client data, switch memory off so nothing crosses between projects. On a Pro account, also switch off "create memory from sensitive information".
• Connectors. Google and Microsoft are reasonable, because they already hold your email and calendar. Anything else has to justify why it needs your data. Every connector shares information both ways.

Cowork

• Trusted folders. Give Claude one specific folder, not Documents or Desktop. Review the list and remove anything you didn't mean to add.
• When it asks for access, click Allow. Never Always Allow.
• Allowed sites. If you use the built-in browser, add only the sites you want it to reach.

Habits

• Don't press thumbs up or thumbs down in chat. That sends the conversation for review.
• Never paste a client's name, company or anything identifying. Scrub it first: tuitiv.ai/free/scrub.
• Back up your machine. Time Machine on Mac, File History on Windows. Claude won't delete a file, but it will rewrite one over the last version.
• Anything about a person is your decision, not Claude's. It can prepare; you decide.

My global instructions

Left to its own devices, Claude is a very energetic intern who starts building before you've finished the sentence. These three instructions fix that, once. In Claude, open Settings and paste this into your global instructions.

My global instructions

1. Ask me questions before you start. Before you begin any task that isn't trivial, ask me the 5 most important questions you need answered to get it right. Wait for my answers before you start.

2. When I type #plan. Any time I type #plan, run this: before building anything, help me plan it first. Ask me what I'm trying to achieve, who it's for, and what a great result looks like. Then lay out a short step-by-step plan and let me adjust it before you start.

3. Accuracy over confidence. Accuracy matters more than sounding confident or complete. Only tell me things you actually know or can verify. If you're not sure, say so plainly. I'd always rather you tell me "I don't know" or "I'm not certain" than fill the gap. Never invent facts, figures, names, dates, quotes, sources, or links. If you're estimating, inferring, or working from assumption, label it clearly. If something genuinely needs checking or a search to be sure, tell me that instead of guessing.

The six documents that make it yours

The step everybody skips because it feels like homework. It decides whether the output sounds like you or like every other business on the internet. The plugin builds all six with you.

• Voice: how you write and speak, your sign-offs, the phrases you overuse, the words you'd never use
• Role: what you do, what you're accountable for, what success is measured on
• Business: what you sell, to whom, at what price, how it works, the team, the constraints
• Brand: colours, fonts, the rules, examples of things that look right and wrong
• Objectives: what you're working on this quarter and this year, and why
• Stakeholders: the people you communicate with most, and how each of them likes to receive things

Then build in this order

I built mine upside down and it wobbled for months.

1. Privacy settings. The safety pass above, before anything else.
2. One project, one folder. A fresh folder, not your whole Documents folder. Everything Claude builds lands somewhere you own, not in a chat you'll spend next Tuesday trying to find.
3. Context. The six documents. The plugin does this with you.
4. Skills. A job you set up once and run with a forward slash. My rule: done it twice, it becomes a skill.
5. Automations. Only now, schedule a skill to run at 7am. The Morning Brief is a good first one: tuitiv.ai/free/brief.
6. A dashboard you'll actually open. Objectives, tasks, pipeline. One page.

Your first test: five questions

Once your context is in, ask it this. If the answers are about your business and not a business, the setup worked.

With everything you know about my business, my objectives and what I've built recently:
1. What am I missing?
2. Where's the money I'm not collecting?
3. What have I decided this month that contradicts something I decided earlier?
4. Based on everything you know, what should I be worried about?
5. Can the plans I've made for this year still be made with the time that's left? Be specific.

Downloads

When it's not quite right