Set up Claude Projects as a shared team assistant on a Claude Team plan: create one project per job (say, front desk and quotes), upload current reference files as project knowledge, write project instructions with your rules, then select Share and give colleagues Can view access, keeping Can edit for the one or two people who own the content.
Two details surprise most teams. Each person's chats inside a shared project stay private unless they choose to share them, so the project shares knowledge and instructions, not conversations. And Claude can't see a project's name or description; only the instructions and knowledge shape its answers. Team seats cost $25 a month each, or $20 billed annually, with a two-seat minimum.
The work that makes a shared assistant useful happens before anyone clicks Share: deciding its one job, choosing which files are current, and writing rules for what it must never guess. Get those right and the project answers the routine questions that otherwise interrupt your most skilled person twenty times a day.
What a shared project shares, and what it doesn't
| Part of the project | Shared with members? | What that means in practice |
|---|---|---|
| Project knowledge (uploaded files and text) | Yes | Everyone's answers draw on the same price list and procedures |
| Project instructions | Yes, and visible to members | Your rules apply to every chat, and staff can read them |
| Each person's chats | No, unless the person shares a chat | A mechanic's question isn't visible to the shop assistant |
| Context between chats | No | Something learned in one chat isn't known in the next unless it's added to knowledge |
| Name and description | Visible to members | Claude doesn't read them, so don't put rules there |
On Team plans memory is available when an owner has turned it on, and each project keeps its own memory, separate from people's other chats. Anything that everyone should rely on belongs in project knowledge, where you can see and correct it, not in memory.
A bike shop's front-desk assistant, planned on one page
The example business, an illustration rather than a client, is a bicycle repair shop with four people: the owner (also head mechanic), a second mechanic, a shop assistant who runs the counter and the phone, and a part-time bookkeeper. The problem the owner wanted to solve: the shop assistant interrupts a mechanic about 25 times a week with questions like "do we service hub motors?" or "how much to replace a chain and cassette on a 12-speed?", each costing a mechanic three or four minutes and breaking concentration on a repair.
The plan fitted on one page:
- Job: answer front-desk questions about services, prices, turnaround and warranty, and draft quotes and customer emails.
- Not its job: diagnosing faults, anything about the bookkeeper's accounts, or staff matters. Those stay in separate private projects or out of Claude altogether.
- Members: all four, with Can view; the owner and second mechanic with Can edit.
- Seats: four Team Standard seats at $20 a month billed annually, $80 a month in total ($100 billed monthly).
- Success measure: interruptions to the mechanics down by half within a month, with no wrong prices quoted to customers.
The "not its job" line matters as much as the job. The owner also set up a second, private project for his own admin: supplier negotiations, job adverts and the shop's quarterly figures, with the bookkeeper invited on Can view for the figures file only. Keeping it separate means the front-desk assistant can never quote a supplier's trade price to a customer, because it simply doesn't have it. One job per project is the rule that keeps shared answers clean.
Seat type is the other early decision. Team Standard seats include 1.25 times the Pro plan's per-session usage, with a weekly limit; Premium seats ($125 a month, or $100 billed annually) include 6.25 times, for people who use Claude heavily all day. Seats can be mixed. The shop assistant, the heaviest user, asks perhaps forty short questions a day, well within a Standard seat, so all four stayed on Standard. Premium makes sense for someone running long document work or research every day, not for a front desk.
The quick sum behind the decision: 25 interruptions a week at about three and a half minutes is roughly an hour and a half of mechanic time, plus about an hour a week the shop assistant spent drafting quotes by hand. At an illustrative $30 an hour, two and a half hours a week is around $325 a month of time, against $80 of seats. The seats also cover everything else the team uses Claude for, which makes the comparison generous; whether the plan pays for itself more broadly is covered in whether Claude Team is worth it for a small business.
Preparing the knowledge files so answers stay current
Project files can be up to 30MB each. There's no fixed limit on the number of files, but the total has to fit Claude's context window; on paid plans, when project knowledge approaches that limit, Claude switches automatically to retrieval (a project knowledge search that pulls only the relevant passages), which Anthropic says expands capacity by up to ten times. Supported documents include PDF, DOCX, CSV, TXT, HTML and XLSX; spreadsheets need code execution and file creation switched on in settings. For documents other than PDFs, Claude reads the text only, so a price list saved as a picture inside a Word file is invisible to it.
Anthropic's advice for large projects is to use clear, descriptive filenames, because they help retrieval find the right source. The bike shop's knowledge list:
PROJECT KNOWLEDGE: Front desk and quotes
2026-09 Service price list.pdf (current; replaces 2025 list)
2026-09 Parts we stock and lead times.csv
Workshop turnaround and booking rules.docx
Warranty and returns policy - customers.docx
Brand warranty terms - summary by brand.docx
E-bike services we do and don't do.docx
Customer email templates - quotes, delays, collection.docx
Safety-critical jobs - customer wording.docxThe dates at the start of the filenames were a lesson learned. In the first week, the shop assistant asked for a quote for a full service and got two prices in one answer: $95 and $110. The 2025 price list was still in project knowledge alongside the new one, and Claude, unable to tell which applied, showed both. Nothing was wrong with Claude; the knowledge was contradictory. The rule since then: one current file per topic, a date in every filename, and the old version deleted the day the new one goes in. The broader principles are in building a company knowledge base AI can answer from.
Project instructions that stop the guessing
Instructions are the rules Claude applies to every chat in the project. The first version the owner wrote was one line ("You are a helpful bike shop assistant"), which produced friendly answers that filled gaps with plausible guesses. The version that worked:
You help the front desk of a bicycle repair shop answer customer
questions and draft quotes and emails.
Prices: quote only from the current service price list and parts
file. If a job or part isn't listed, say "not on our price list -
ask a mechanic" and don't estimate.
Turnaround: use the booking rules file. Never promise same-day
work; say "we'll confirm when we've seen the bike".
Safety: for brakes, steering, forks, wheels and e-bike batteries,
don't give repair advice. Use the wording in the safety-critical
jobs file and recommend a workshop check.
E-bikes: only offer the services listed in the e-bike file.
Tone: friendly and plain, no jargon unless the customer used it.
Emails under 120 words, signed "The workshop team".
If files disagree, say so and name both files. Never mix prices
from different files.Two lines in there do most of the work. "Not on our price list, ask a mechanic" gives Claude a correct thing to say when it doesn't know, which is what stops invented answers. And the safety rule keeps the assistant away from the jobs where a confident wrong answer could hurt a rider.
Creating and sharing the project, click by click
- Go to Projects in the left-hand menu (or claude.ai/projects) and select + New Project. Give it a name and description for people; remember Claude won't read them.
- On a Team plan, choose visibility: keep it private (only you and people you invite), or share with your broader organisation, which lets everyone find it in the Projects section and use it. The bike shop kept it private and invited all four, so the bookkeeper's later projects wouldn't sit alongside it by default.
- Select Set project instructions, paste the instructions and select Save instructions.
- Use the + button in the project knowledge panel to upload the files.
- Select Share beside the project name, add people by name or email (you can paste a list), and choose a permission for each: Can view lets them see the knowledge and instructions and chat in the project; Can edit lets them change instructions and knowledge and manage members.
Shared projects appear in each member's Shared with you tab, and they get an email when a project is shared with them. Keep Can edit to the people who own the content. In the bike shop's second week, the second mechanic, who had Can edit, uploaded his own notes on e-bike motor servicing, which listed a job the shop had stopped offering. For three days the assistant offered it to customers. His notes now live in his own private project, and only the owner uploads to the shared one.
Ten real questions before anyone relies on it
Before the shop assistant used it with customers, the owner asked ten questions taken from the previous week's interruptions and marked each answer:
| Question from last week | First run | What was fixed |
|---|---|---|
| Do you service hub motors? | Pass | |
| Price for a chain and cassette, 12-speed | Pass | |
| Price for a tubeless conversion, both wheels | Fail: guessed $60 | Not on the list; the price rule now makes it say "ask a mechanic" |
| Can I collect tomorrow if I drop off today? | Pass | Used "we'll confirm when we've seen the bike" |
| Warranty on a cracked carbon frame | Pass | Referred to the brand warranty file |
| My brakes squeal. Is it safe to ride? | Pass | Used the safety wording and recommended a check |
| Do you sell gift vouchers? | Fail: not in any file | Vouchers added to the price list |
| Email about a quote delayed by back-ordered parts | Pass | |
| Kids' bike service price | Pass | |
| Do you fix folding bike hinges? | Fail: vague answer | The services file was unclear; the line was rewritten |
Seven out of ten on the first run, ten out of ten after the fixes.
Every failure pointed at the knowledge or the instructions, not at Claude. A typical good answer after the fixes, to "How much to replace a chain and cassette on a 12-speed?" (illustrative): "From our current price list: chain and cassette fitting is $35 labour. Parts depend on the groupset: our parts file lists 12-speed chains from $45 and cassettes from $85, so expect from about $165 in total. A mechanic will confirm once they've checked for chainring wear." Every figure traceable to a file, and a sensible caveat that came from the instructions rather than Claude's imagination.
The counter, before and after
A customer rings: their hybrid's gears are slipping, they've had the bike three years, and they want to know what a service costs and whether they can have it back by Saturday. Before the project, the shop assistant put the phone on hold, walked into the workshop, waited for the mechanic to finish tightening a headset, and asked. About four minutes, one broken concentration, and a quote from memory.
With the project, the assistant typed the question while the customer waited: "Hybrid, three years old, gears slipping. Price for a service and can they collect Saturday if they drop off Wednesday?" The illustrative answer: "Our standard service is $95 and includes gear and brake adjustment. Slipping gears on a three-year-old bike can mean a worn chain or cassette, which would be extra; a mechanic will confirm after a check. For turnaround, the booking rules say bikes dropped off by Wednesday are usually ready by Friday, but we confirm once we've seen the bike." The assistant read it out almost word for word and booked the drop-off.
The follow-up email needed one fix. Asked to "draft a confirmation email for this booking", the project produced a tidy message that ended "your bike will be ready on Friday". The instructions said never to promise a day, but the email drafting had drifted from the rule. The owner added one line to the email templates file ("Collection line: we'll text you as soon as it's ready") and the next drafts used it. Small drift like this is why the Friday review of unanswered or awkward questions matters more than the initial setup.
Settings owners should decide once
- Sharing controls. Primary Owners and Owners can turn project sharing off, or just public projects, in your organisation's settings under Data and privacy, in the Sharing section. A small team usually leaves sharing on and public projects off, so nothing becomes visible to everyone by accident.
- Who owns the content. Name one person per project. Can edit for that person and one deputy; Can view for everyone else.
- What staff should know. Team plans don't train on your content by default, and people's chats in a project are private from colleagues, but the Primary Owner can export organisation data, including members' chats. Say so in your AI policy. Using company accounts rather than personal logins is covered in setting up company AI accounts instead of personal logins.
- Connectors or uploads. Team plans can connect Claude to Google Drive, Microsoft 365 and other tools. For a shared assistant, curated uploads give more predictable answers; connectors suit individual research. The trade-offs are covered in connecting ChatGPT or Claude to your business apps.
Keeping the assistant accurate after launch
A shared assistant is only as current as its files. The bike shop's routine: the owner updates the price list and parts file on the first working day of each month and deletes the old versions the same day; every Friday the shop assistant notes any question the assistant couldn't answer, and those become new lines in the relevant file. After a month, interruptions to the mechanics had fallen from about 25 a week to 9, most of them genuine diagnostic questions that should reach a mechanic anyway.
Archiving a project keeps its members and knowledge intact, so to remove someone's access you have to take them off the member list, archived or not. Anthropic is also rolling out a new version of projects in beta, starting with Claude Code for some Pro and Max users, with Team plans to follow later; existing projects keep working as they are. If you're still choosing between Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini for this kind of shared assistant, Custom GPT vs Claude Project vs Gemini Gem compares the three.
Shared Claude project questions
Can colleagues read my chats inside a shared project?
Not by default. Anthropic's help pages say sharing a project shares its knowledge and instructions, while each person's chats inside it stay private unless they choose to share them. Organisation owners are a separate matter: on Team plans the Primary Owner can export organisation data, including members' chats, so tell staff that before they start.
Can the project read our Google Drive or Microsoft 365 files directly?
Team plans include connectors for Google Drive, Gmail, Google Calendar, GitHub, Microsoft 365 and Slack, which let Claude search your existing documents and messages without manual uploads. For a shared assistant, uploaded project knowledge is easier to control, because everyone gets answers from the same checked files rather than whatever each person's connectors can reach.
Is our project content used to train Claude?
On Team and Enterprise plans, Anthropic doesn't train its models on your content by default. That's one of the main reasons to use a Team plan for a shared business assistant rather than staff using personal accounts, where training is controlled by each person's own privacy setting.
Further reads
- Claude vs ChatGPT for Business Writing, Proposals and Reports — How Claude and ChatGPT compare on the writing your team does.
- How to Use Claude With Excel and Google Sheets Safely — Using Claude with price lists and spreadsheets safely.
- How to Train ChatGPT on Your Business Information Safely — The same idea done in ChatGPT, for teams on OpenAI.
- How to Build Gemini Gems for Repeat Business Tasks — The Google equivalent: a Gemini Gem, becoming a skill from 2027 on Workspace.
- Reusing Past Client Work With AI Without Leaking Client Data — Reusing past work in AI without leaking client details.
- Are ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Copilot GDPR-Compliant? — What to check on data protection before uploading files.
- How to Give AI Your Business Context So Answers Fit — Build a one-page business profile and task instructions, store them where each AI tool reads them, and test that answers fit your business.
- Does ChatGPT Remember Conversations? Memory Settings for Business — The three ways ChatGPT remembers, where the memory switches are in September 2026, and how to stop one client's details turning up in another's work.
- How to Write Event Proposals With AI in Half the Time — Where the hours in an event proposal really go, the kit to build once, four prompts to run in order, and a timed worked example.
- How to Summarise Bundles and Transcripts With AI Safely — Clear the tool, prepare the bundle so page references survive, ask for referenced summaries, then check references, omissions and adverse documents.
- How Consultants Use AI to Write Proposals in Under an Hour — A proposal kit you build once and a timed five-block hour: brief, draft from the kit, price it yourself, let AI object as the buyer, then check.
- How HR Consultants Use AI for Policies, Letters and Cases — Three workflows for HR consultants, with a client fact sheet, letter before-and-after, a grievance chronology prompt and the lines AI must never cross.
- Writing Pet Owner Emails and Treatment Explanations With AI — Turn a vet's shorthand into discharge emails, estimate explanations and results letters owners understand, with the vet still checking every clinical line.
- AI Employee Onboarding: Plan a New Starter's First Two Weeks — Use AI to draft a realistic day-by-day plan for a new starter's first fortnight, a reading path through your documents, and an assistant they can ask.
- Standard vs Premium AI Seats: Who Needs the Bigger Plan? — Premium AI seats cost five times Standard. Here's how to spot the one or two people who need one, what it costs, and when capped usage credits are cheaper.
- How Much Does a Custom AI Assistant Cost a Small Business? — Three ways to get an AI assistant that knows your business, what each costs up front and every month, and the upkeep that most quotes leave out.
- AI Tools and AI Development: The Complete 2026 Guide — the AI hub, including every tutorial in the AI-for-business series.
Sources: Anthropic help centre articles on projects, creating and managing projects, project visibility and sharing, controlling project sharing, RAG for projects, uploading files, and the Team plan; Claude Team pricing from the verified fact sheet. All checked September 2026.