Before You Start

~3 minutes. Make sure Claude can see your world before you ask it to organize it.

Verify Your Tools Are Connected

The setup experience changes dramatically when Claude already has access to your tools. Without them, Claude gives you a generic folder structure. With them, it reads your project board, searches your team's docs, and understands what you actually work on.

Open Claude Code and ask it something like:

"What tools do you have access to? Can you list what's connected?"

Claude will tell you what's connected. You want to see at least a few of these:

🔍

Search

A tool that searches your docs, chat threads, and wiki pages to understand your team's context (e.g., Glean, Google Drive, Notion)

🎫

Project Tracker

Reads your tickets and project boards to suggest relevant projects during setup (e.g., Jira, Linear, GitHub Issues)

🔀

Code / Docs

Finds your repos and documents, understands what codebase or wiki you work in (e.g., GitLab, GitHub, Confluence)

Missing any of these? Set up your MCP connections first. You can proceed without them, but the setup will feel generic instead of personalized.

How to Talk to Claude

Claude is conversational. You don't need special syntax or memorized commands. Just talk to it like a knowledgeable colleague who's new to your team.

Some things to try right now:

"Can you check if my search tool is working? Try searching for something about my team."

"What tickets are assigned to me right now?"

"Search for wiki pages I've edited recently."

If something doesn't work, paste the error and ask Claude to help fix it. It can read your config files and debug connection issues directly.

Set Expectations

Three things to know before you start:

1

It gets better over time.

The first day is useful. After two weeks of processing meetings and capturing context, it becomes a different tool entirely. This is context engineering, not a quick fix.

2

You stay in control.

Everything lives as local markdown files on your machine. No data leaves your laptop. No vendor lock-in. You can read, edit, or delete anything Claude creates.

3

80% accuracy.

Claude gets most things right, but your expertise fills the gaps: which decisions actually matter, what was said between the lines, which action items are real commitments. Expect to review and refine.

Ready? Next: Setting Up Your Workspace