What you want is AI that already knows you and your business
Something that already knows your clients, who’s on your team, which tools you use, how you price, how you like work done, and why the last project went the way it did.
I call this a second brain. You’ll also see similar setups described as an AI operating system, which sounds a lot grander than what it turns out to be.
Memories and projects help, but they only get you part of the way
Here’s the test. Name a client, or one of your own processes, in a new chat. Does it know what you mean, or does it ask?
Memories can retain useful facts and preferences about you, but they aren’t a structured record of how your business works. Go and look at yours: ChatGPT, Claude. Most people are surprised by how little is there, and by what it decided was worth keeping.
Projects get closer, because you’re putting real files in rather than hoping it noticed. But project files can become snapshots of the moment you uploaded them, rather than a source that stays in sync with the original.
Projects are usually designed around one body of work, so context you’ve built up in one may not automatically carry into another. That can mean explaining your tone of voice, your clients and your tools again in each project you open.
A second brain is a folder of files in your Documents, on your laptop
It’s nothing more than a folder, and the files in it are plain text. Markdown, which is just text with a bit of formatting, and which anything can open.
Using the desktop app, you can give the AI access to the folder when you want it to work with that context. The folder stays on your machine, so if you deleted the app tomorrow it would still be sitting there.
It also isn’t locked to either of them. The useful part is portability: the same underlying files can be used with either tool, rather than living only inside one vendor’s project.
What goes in is everything you’d have to tell a new intern
Think about what a sharp new starter would need in their first week: not the work itself, the things around it that nobody writes down. The useful material is the context you keep finding yourself explaining again.
agents.mdThe contents page, and the one it reads first. Says what all the others are. Name it claude.md if you use Claude.about-me.mdYou, and what you're focused on right now.my-team.mdWho's who, and who handles what.working-style.mdHow you want it to behave, and what to ask before assuming.tone-of-voice.mdHow you write, with real examples of it.my-business-tools.mdWhich tools you use and what each one is for. Not what's in them.processes/One file per recurring job, and why it's done that way.projects/One file per live piece of work.clients/One each, if you hold named accounts.
Two things worth writing down that no filename suggests: the words you use internally that clients call something else, and the two systems everyone assumes talk to each other and don’t.
Your business tools already know where a job has got to, what’s outstanding and what a document says. The folder holds the thinking behind all of it.
Anything Claude or ChatGPT can look up itself stays out of the folder
If it can go and read the thing itself, in Gmail or Outlook, Slack or Teams, Google Drive or SharePoint, Notion, Xero, HubSpot, your calendar, then let it. That’s what a connector is for, and if you could call one to get the answer, you should.
Keep two copies of one fact and you’re updating two things in two places, which never works. The folder’s copy is the one that goes stale, and stale is worse than absent, because it gets used with confidence.
You don’t write the files yourself, you talk and AI writes them
People brace themselves for an afternoon of writing documentation. You don’t have to start by writing it. Talk it through, then let AI turn what you said into draft files for you to review and save.
Use the microphone rather than the keyboard. It’s quicker than typing, and you think as you talk, so you end up saying the things you’d never have sat down and written.
You don’t need to know where to start either. Ask it to interview you about your business and answer the questions it asks.
How to build your folder
One thing to sort out first: for direct access to a local folder, you’ll need to use the Claude or ChatGPT desktop app rather than an ordinary browser chat. Check that your current plan supports the feature.
- 01Make the folderAnywhere in your Documents. It's an ordinary folder and it stays yours.
- 02Point the app at itStart a new chat and look for the option to work in a folder. Pick the one you just made, so it can use that context while it works.
- 03TalkAbout your business, your clients, how you work and why you do things the way you do.
- 04Ask it to writeIn markdown, sorted into folders that make sense to you. Start with the contents page, so it knows what the rest of them are.
Keeping the folder current is the honest cost
You have to remember to say “save that”, and the folder wants a tidy every so often. Left alone it drifts out of date, and an out-of-date folder is worse than a thin one, because it’s read as true.
Nobody does this perfectly, including the people who sell it. The trick is that it only has to be better than explaining yourself from scratch every morning, and that’s a low bar.