One folder that turns the AI you already use into a company brain. It knows your business, works in your voice, and gets smarter every session.
You have taught ChatGPT about your business more times than you can count, and it forgets every time the chat ends. This playbook fixes the memory problem: you build the brain once, as plain files in a folder, and every session after that starts smart. It runs on Claude and Cowork from a normal conversation with no connectors needed, and the setup prompt at the bottom works in any AI.
Every new chat starts from zero. You explain who you are, what you sell, how you talk, and the AI writes something decent. Then the chat ends and everything it learned dies with it. Modeled at 15 minutes of re-explaining across five sessions a week, that is more than an hour every week teaching the same facts to the same tool.
The bigger cost is quality. An AI that half-knows your business writes generic drafts, pulls prices from memory instead of your price list, and sounds like everyone else's AI instead of you.
| Category | What it captures |
|---|---|
| Three roots | Brain/ is what the business knows, Workshop/ is where the work gets built, Assets/ is finished work ready to hand off |
| Company core | Four files that hold the truth: who you are, who you serve, what you sell, how you sound |
| Five departments | Marketing, Sales, Operations, Finance, Customer Support, each with its own one-page brain |
| Department heads | Five agents you name yourself, each with a soul, a lane, and a permission line, plus a chief of staff that routes them |
| The operating loop | Prime loads the brain when a session starts, wrap saves what it learned when it ends |
| The setup prompt | A paste-in prompt that interviews you and writes the starting files for you |
Open Claude Code in your home folder. In the Claude desktop app, open the Code tab and choose your home folder (the one with your name and the house icon). In a terminal, run cd ~ and then claude. Your brain will live at ~/Business-Brain, and the Builder Prompt creates that folder for you. The home folder is the rule: not iCloud Drive, not Google Drive, not Dropbox or OneDrive, and on most Macs that rules out Desktop and Documents because iCloud syncs them by default. Synced drives swap files for cloud placeholders and pull them out from under your AI mid-task, and a brain on a synced drive will eventually lose a thought. The one exception is Assets/, and it always goes to the cloud. It holds finished work you share, so the Builder Prompt asks which cloud drive you use (iCloud Drive, Google Drive, Dropbox or OneDrive) and puts it there. The Brain and the Workshop never do.
Let the AI build the structure. Everything lives under three roots: Brain/ is what the business knows, Workshop/ is the workbench where the work gets built, Assets/ is finished work you hand to someone. Paste in this Builder Prompt. It creates ~/Business-Brain and every folder and file inside it, writes the operating rules, prints the finished tree so you can verify it, then rolls straight into your setup interview. From then on, start every session in ~/Business-Brain and the brain loads itself:
You are building my Business Brain. Create everything below exactly
as written, confirm each step as done, and tell me plainly about
anything you could not do.
STEP 0 - MAKE THE HOME
Create a folder called Business-Brain in my home folder, at
~/Business-Brain, and build everything below inside it. Never
Desktop, Documents, iCloud Drive, Google Drive, Dropbox or OneDrive:
a synced folder swaps files for cloud placeholders and breaks the
brain. Brain/ and Workshop/ stay local only; Assets/ goes to my cloud
drive in STEP 3. If ~/Business-Brain already exists, touch nothing
and ask me what to do.
STEP 1 - THE THREE ROOTS
Inside ~/Business-Brain, create three folders:
Brain/ everything the business knows
Workshop/ where the work gets built
Assets/ finished work, ready to hand to someone
STEP 2 - BUILD THE BRAIN
Inside Brain/ create:
Company/ with four files, section headings only, answers left blank:
- About-Us.md: The basics / The story / What makes us different /
The goal right now
- ICP.md: The ideal client / Good fit signs / Bad fit signs /
Where they hang out
- Offer.md: What we sell / How clients buy / Payment terms /
What we do not do
- Voice.md: The short version / Rules / Say and never say /
A real sample
Five department folders: Marketing, Sales, Operations, Finance,
Customer-Support. In each, one file named after the department with
three headings: What we know / Open right now / Biggest struggle.
Agents/ with five folders: Marketing-Head, Sales-Head,
Operations-Head, Finance-Head, Support-Head. In each, five files with
headings only: Soul.md, Identity.md, Instructions.md, Context.md,
Permissions.md.
Drop-Files-Here/ left empty. I will drop business documents there.
STEP 3 - WORKSHOP AND ASSETS
Inside Workshop/: five folders, one per department. This is the
workbench where everything gets built before it is finished.
Inside Assets/: a Clients/ folder plus five folders, one per
department. Finished work lives there. Each client I take on later
gets Assets/Clients/[client-name]/ with In/ and Out/ inside.
Assets always lives in my cloud drive, never only on this computer:
it holds finished files I share, not the brain's thinking. Look for
the cloud drives on this computer (on a Mac, iCloud Drive is in
~/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs, and Google Drive,
Dropbox and OneDrive are in ~/Library/CloudStorage/). Ask me one
question: which one holds my finished work, iCloud Drive, Google
Drive, Dropbox, or OneDrive? If the one I use is not installed, tell
me how to add it and wait. Then create a Business-Brain-Assets folder
in that drive, move the Assets folders into it, connect it here as
Assets/, and confirm the connection works by writing a test file
through Assets/ and reading it back from the drive.
STEP 4 - THE OPERATING RULES
Create CLAUDE.md at the root of ~/Business-Brain containing these standing
rules, written out in full so every future session follows them:
- At the start of every session, read Brain/Company/ and the
department files before responding to anything.
- One fact lives in one place. Update it there, never copy it into a
second file.
- Drafts save to Workshop/. Finished work saves to Assets/. Client
work saves to Assets/Clients/[client-name]/. Every file name starts
with the date, like 2026-08-29-Name.md.
- Any price, discount, commitment, or message to a real person ends
as a draft for me. Never decide those for me.
- At the end of every session, save what was learned back into the
right Brain/ files, each fact with its source in parentheses.
- Report honestly. A thing that failed is reported as failed, never
dressed up as done.
STEP 5 - VERIFY
Print the full folder tree so I can see everything that was created.
Anything missing or skipped gets named, not hidden.
STEP 6 - FILL THE BRAIN
Now run my setup interview. Ask what documents I already have and read
anything I drop into Brain/Drop-Files-Here/ before asking questions.
Ask only what is still missing, in short batches, never one question
at a time. Have me name my five department heads and you, my chief of
staff, the sixth seat that routes everything. Ask me each
department's biggest struggle and write those into each head's
Soul.md. Show me everything before saving it. Then finish by doing one
real task for me, in my voice, using only what the brain now knows.
STEP 7 - HAND OFF
Tell me: from now on, start every session in ~/Business-Brain so the
brain loads itself.
On ChatGPT or any AI that cannot create files, build the same tree by hand in your home folder and use the Core Prompt at the bottom of this page instead.
Start with what already exists. Hand the AI your website, old proposals, a brand guide, anything you have taught another AI. It pulls the facts out instead of asking you to type your business in from scratch.
Fill the gaps in batches. Whatever the documents did not cover gets asked in three short rounds: identity, market and offer, voice. You answer once and it is answered forever.
Give every department a brain. One page each for Marketing, Sales, Operations, Finance, and Customer Support: what it knows, what is open, and its biggest struggle right now. Rough is fine, it sharpens with use.
Name your team. Each department gets a head, and each head gets five small files: Soul, Identity, Instructions, Context, Permissions. The soul is the part most people skip and the part that matters most. A Head of Sales with a soul knows deals die from follow-ups that never happened, and it works like it knows that. The brain itself is the sixth seat, your chief of staff: it routes each request to the head that owns it and keeps every file under the right root, and you name it too.
Add the operating rules. One fact lives in one place, so a price change happens once and every department is current. The brain reads everything at the start of a session and saves what it learned at the end. And it drafts everything but decides nothing: prices, commitments, and anything sent to a real person end as drafts for you.
Prove it on a real job. A post about the job you finished today, a quote from your walkthrough notes, a reply to the customer who emailed this morning. The first output is where the whole thing clicks.
Know the ceiling. A folder brain runs on what you paste and drop in, and for most owners that covers months of real work. The day you want it reading your live inbox, prepping your morning, and drafting replies inside real email threads, you are past what a folder alone can do. That level is connector and agent territory, and it is the work we do at Obsessed AI for trade and service businesses. When you get there, obsessedai.co.