Projects and knowledge

Garden · not yet reviewed Established: widely used Widely discussed since 2024-06

A workspace where you keep the files, instructions and chats for one body of work together, so every conversation in it starts with the same background.

Also called: Projects · Spaces · notebooks · knowledge base · project files · workspaces

Connections

Understand first

Ideas this one builds on.

• Context engineering (garden)
• Custom instructions (garden)

Leads on to

Ideas that build on this one.

• Custom assistants (garden)
• Onboard AI like a new hire (garden)

Related

Often used together or easily confused.

• Memory (garden)
• Privacy and data (garden)

Blueprints that practise it

• Build a style guide so AI drafts sound like you (garden)
• Hire and onboard an AI copilot for one piece of work (garden)
• Teach your AI assistant your team's jargon, one confirmed term at a time (garden)

Resources that teach it

• Claude 101 (garden)
• Claude Cowork 101: How to automate your workday without touching code (How I AI, with JJ Englert) (garden)
• The Agent That Saved My Brain (garden)
• AI Style Guides: How to Help AI Write Like You (garden)
• How to Use Claude Code as a Second Brain (garden)
• Compound Writing: The Ultimate Guide (garden)
• Build your personal AI copilot (garden)
• Lenny's Data: free public starter pack (garden)
• How to build your PM second brain with ChatGPT (garden)
• Behind the Craft — Transcripts (garden)

Competency

• Describe the task
• Make it repeatable

Find projects and knowledge on the commons map ↗

You may know it from

• law a case file Everything about one matter in one folder, so anyone picking it up starts from the same facts.
• office work a shared project folder

In products

The same idea, under different names in different tools.

Provider	What they call it
Anthropic	Claude Projects
OpenAI	ChatGPT Projects
Google	Gemini Gems with files; NotebookLM
Perplexity	Perplexity Spaces

In plain words

A project is a folder for AI work. You put in the documents that matter (a style guide, a strategy, past reports), write a few instructions for that work, and then every chat you start inside it already knows that background. You stop re-uploading the same files.

The products have different names. Claude and ChatGPT call them Projects, Perplexity calls them Spaces, and Google spreads the idea across Gems with attached files and NotebookLM notebooks. Underneath, they all do the same job: keep context for one area of work in one place.

Choose the files with care. A small set of current, relevant files works better than a dump of everything. Out-of-date documents get treated as true. And because files in a shared project may be visible to teammates, think about what belongs there.

Example

A grants manager creates a project for one funder. It holds the funder’s guidelines, last year’s application, the budget template and the note “always match their language about outcomes.” Each new section she drafts starts from the same facts.

How it connects

• A practical tool for context engineering, combined with project-level custom instructions.
• Close cousin of memory: projects keep chosen files, memory keeps learned details.
• Custom assistants package a similar setup for others to use.

Try it

List the three files you paste into AI most often and guess which one will make the biggest difference. Put all three in a project and try one of your usual requests.

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