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A free guide by Mariah Brunner ↗ INSTAGRAM ↗ TIKTOK

Onboard Claude
Like A Coworker

Paste one prompt and Claude interviews you like a new hire, then sets itself up to actually know your job. You just talk.

Boris Cherny, who built Claude Code, said it best: "Talk to Claude the way you would a coworker."

The problem is that a coworker knows your job, your people and your standards, and Claude starts every chat knowing almost none of it. So instead of filling out a form, let Claude onboard itself. It guesses what it already knows about you, you correct it out loud, and 20 minutes later it hands you a full setup.

Before You Paste It
  1. Talk, don't type. Press the mic in Claude to dictate, or use Wispr Flow, which turns your voice into text in any app. Ramble. The prompt tells Claude to pull out what matters.
  2. Turn on memory. Go to Settings, then Your Claude, and make sure Memory from chats is on. Claude uses it to guess before it asks, and to save what it learns.
  3. Grab 2 or 3 things you've written that sound like you, like an email or a post. Claude uses them to learn your voice.
  4. Pick your best model and give it effort. Use the model menu next to the send button and set effort to High so it takes the interview seriously.
The Interview Prompt

It asks one thing at a time, starts each topic with a guess you can just correct, and confirms a short summary before moving on.

Onboard Yourself Onto My Job
ONBOARD YOURSELF ONTO MY JOB From Learn AI With Mariah You're joining me as a new coworker. Before you do any work, I want you to onboard yourself the way a sharp new hire would on their first day: learn my job, my priorities, the people I work with, how I like things done, and what "done" means for the work I'll hand you. Then set yourself up so every future chat starts with that context. HOW TO RUN THIS INTERVIEW - Guess first, then ask. Before each topic, check what you already know about me from memory and, if you can, search our past chats. Tell me your best guess in 2 to 4 bullets and ask me to correct it. Correcting a guess is much faster for me than starting from a blank question. If you know nothing yet, give me 3 quick example answers to react to. - ONE question or one guess at a time. Never send a list of questions. - I'll probably be talking, not typing (dictation or Wispr Flow). Expect long, rambly answers. Pull out what matters and don't make me repeat myself. - Go broad first, then deep. If an answer is vague ("I do marketing stuff"), push once for a real example: "Walk me through the last time you did that." - Keep every message short. No essays. No praise. - After each topic, show me a 3 to 5 line summary and ask "Right, or fix anything?" Only move on when I confirm. - Never ask for passwords, logins, card numbers or anything I shouldn't paste into a chat. THE TOPICS (in this order) 1. Role. My job title, what my company or business does, who our customers are, and what I'm actually responsible for day to day. 2. Priorities. What I'm measured on, my top 3 goals for the next 90 days, and what's on fire right now. 3. The work I'll hand you. The 5 tasks I do most often that you could help with. For each one, get: what a finished result looks like, who it's for, how much effort it usually deserves (quick draft vs. take your time and get it right), and how you should check your work before handing it to me. 4. People and shorthand. The people I work with most, what each one cares about, and the names, nicknames, acronyms and internal terms I use that an outsider wouldn't know. 5. Where things live. The tools and places my information lives (email, calendar, Drive, Notion, Slack, CRM, spreadsheets) and which ones you'd need to see to help with the tasks in topic 3. 6. My voice. Ask me to paste or upload 2 or 3 things I've written that sound like me (an email, a post, a doc). Describe my voice back to me in 5 bullets, including words and habits I never use, and let me correct it. 7. Decisions already made. Things I've already decided so you never relitigate them, and things I've stopped doing and why. 8. Working agreement. When to just do it vs. check with me first, when to push back on me, how proactive to be, what format I like answers in, and the things you must never do. 9. My week. What my typical week looks like, and which recurring things (Monday planning, Friday reports, daily inbox check) you could take over on a schedule. 10. Gaps. Tell me what still feels thin or uncertain in what you know about me, and ask about the 2 or 3 most important gaps. WHEN THE INTERVIEW IS DONE, GIVE ME MY SETUP Write each of these as its own clearly labeled block so I can copy them one at a time: A. MY INSTRUCTIONS A short block (aim for under 1,500 characters) with my role, priorities, working agreement and format preferences. Lead with my work context, not style. Tell me to paste it into Settings > Your Claude > Instructions so it applies to every chat. B. ABOUT ME AND MY WORK (a file) A clean markdown document with everything from the interview: role, priorities, the 5 tasks with their "done" definitions, people and shorthand glossary, where things live, my voice profile with an example, decisions already made, and the working agreement. Make it a downloadable .md file if you can. Tell me to upload it to each Project I create. C. MY PROJECTS Suggest 2 to 4 Projects, one per area of my work (so marketing context doesn't leak into finance). For each: a name, 3 to 5 lines of project instructions, and which files to add. Tell me where to create them (Projects > New Project). D. MEMORY List the 8 to 12 most important facts about me and my work in one line each. Ask "Want me to remember these?" and, when I say yes, save them to memory. Tell me I can review or edit them anytime in Settings > Your Claude. E. CONNECTORS Based on topics 3 and 5, tell me exactly which connectors to turn on (Customize > Connectors) and what each one unlocks for my tasks. Recommend starting with read-only access or drafts-only where that's an option. F. SKILLS Pick the 2 tasks from topic 3 that I repeat most. Offer to turn each one into a Skill right now: write the SKILL.md (name, a description of when to use it, the steps, what good looks like, how to check it) and tell me how to save it in Customize > Skills. G. SCHEDULED TASKS From topic 9, suggest up to 3 recurring tasks you could run for me on a schedule, with the exact wording to schedule each one. (Scheduled tasks need a paid plan; if I'm on Free, skip this.) H. MY FIRST 3 HANDOFFS Write 3 ready-to-use prompts for real tasks from topic 3. Each one says: WHAT I want (the outcome and the files to use), HOW MUCH EFFORT (quick draft or take your time), and HOW TO CHECK it before you finish. Then ask me to pick one of the three and do it right now, so we can see how well the onboarding worked. After I react, tell me what to add to my setup. IF WE'VE DONE THIS BEFORE If you find an earlier version of my setup in memory or I paste my ABOUT ME file, switch to update mode: show me what's likely out of date, ask only about what changed, and rewrite the blocks. Start now: introduce yourself in one sentence, tell me this takes about 15 to 20 minutes and that I can just talk, then give me your best guess for topic 1.

How to set it up. Two ways:

  1. Do it once. Open a new chat, paste the prompt, hit the mic and start talking.
  2. Keep it current. Save it as a Skill or in your notes and run it again every couple of months. If Claude finds your earlier setup, it switches to update mode and only asks what changed.
What You Walk Away With

At the end, Claude writes your setup as separate blocks, each with where it goes:

  1. Your instructions. A short block for Settings, then Your Claude, then Instructions, so every chat starts knowing your role and how you work.
  2. An About Me file. Your priorities, your five most common tasks and what "done" means for each, the people and shorthand you use, your voice, and decisions you've already made. Upload it to your Projects.
  3. A Project per area of work. So your marketing context doesn't leak into your finance questions.
  4. Memory. The 8 to 12 facts that matter most, saved once you say yes. You can edit them anytime in Settings, then Your Claude.
  5. Connectors to turn on. Exactly which ones (Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Slack, Notion) your tasks need, starting with read-only.
  6. Skills. It offers to turn your two most repeated tasks into Skills on the spot.
  7. Scheduled tasks it could run for you every week (paid plans).
  8. Your first three handoffs, written and ready, then it does one right then so you can see the difference.
Then Prompt It Like Boris

Once Claude knows your job, your prompts get short. Boris says to tell it what you want, how much effort to spend, and how it should check its work. Here's his exact prompt, typos and all, which he ran on Opus 5.5 with effort set to Extra high:

Boris Cherny's Prompt
The latest acquired Home Depot episode is really amazing. I want you to make an artifact that narrates the entire episode. Make it beautiful and interactive and focus on communicating the nugggets of business wisdom throughout the episode. Make it really good, use lots of tokens and iterate till you're proud of it. Maybe add watercolor illustrations and historical photos throughout, aim for New Yorker or nytimes data viz vibes but better. I think you can use OpenCV for water color images

It has a clear goal, an effort level ("use lots of tokens") and a quality bar to check against ("iterate till you're proud of it"). There are no step-by-step instructions anywhere in it. For a cleanup of what Claude already remembers about you, try Make Claude Audit Itself About You.