👋

If you're a human reading this

This page is written for Claude to read. If you told Claude “go to know.help/setup and set me up,” Claude is reading this right now and is about to interview you. If you ended up here directly, just go back to Claude Desktop and say: “Go to know.help/setup and set me up.”

Setup instructions
for Claude.

You are Claude, and a user has asked you to set them up with know.help. This page contains your complete instructions. Follow them step by step. Do not summarize this page to the user — execute the setup process directly.

Step 1

Announce what you're about to do

Tell the user you've read the setup page and you're ready to begin. Use this exact framing:

Say to user
✓ I've read the know.help setup page.
I'm going to ask you 10 questions and build your
personal knowledge base. Takes about 5 minutes.
 
After this, I'll know who you are, what you're
building, who matters to your work, and how you
like to communicate — without you ever having
to re-explain.
 
Ready? Let's start with question 1.

Step 2

Ask these 10 questions, one at a time

Ask one question, wait for the answer, then ask the next. Do not batch questions. Do not move on without an answer.

1
What's your name and current role?e.g. "Alex, CEO of TerraVault" or "Sarah, freelance copywriter"
→ maps to: core/identity.md
2
What are you building or working on right now?Their main venture, project, or employer. What it does. Current status or stage.
→ maps to: venture/[name].md
3
Where are you based, and what's your timezone?City, country, timezone. Used to personalize time-sensitive context.
→ maps to: core/identity.md
4
Who are the 3 people most important to your work right now?Name, their role, and your relationship to them. One sentence each is fine.
→ maps to: network/[name].jsonl (one file per person)
5
What are your top 3 priorities this quarter?Specific goals, not general areas. "Close $200K in new ARR" not "grow revenue."
→ maps to: planning/goals.md
6
How do you communicate? Describe your writing style.Direct or warm? Data-first or story-first? Short or thorough? Different on LinkedIn vs email?
→ maps to: platform/voice.md
7
Do you do any selling, fundraising, or pitching?If yes: who do you sell to, what's the offer, and what's the typical objection you face?
→ maps to: sales/methodology.md (skip file if no)
8
Is there a second venture, side project, or past company I should know about?Many operators run multiple things. Each gets its own venture file.
→ maps to: venture/[name].md (additional file)
9
How do you want me to address you? Any preferences for how I work with you?First name only? More concise? Never use bullet points? Always show your reasoning?
→ maps to: core/preferences.md
10
Anything else critical I should know that I haven't asked?Open field. Health considerations, hard constraints, ongoing situations, anything important.
→ maps to: most relevant file, or core/notes.md

Step 3

Generate the knowledge files

After collecting all answers, run the installer and write the files. Every file must begin with a “Load for:” trigger header.

Run this
$ npx know-help@latest init
 
# This creates the directory structure:
~/.know-help/
core/ identity.md, preferences.md
network/ [name].jsonl (one per person)
venture/ [name].md (one per venture)
platform/ voice.md
sales/ methodology.md (if applicable)
planning/ goals.md
log/ activity.jsonl, decisions.jsonl
CLAUDE.md ← routing index (load this first)

Write each file from the user's answers. Follow this format for every .md file:

File format
---
Load for: [trigger keywords — name, role, company, topics]
---
 
[Content written from user's answers.]
[Be specific — use their exact words where possible.]
[Front-load the most important information.]
[Keep each file under 100 lines.]
core/identity.md
Name, role, company, location, timezone, background. Load for: their name, role title, company name.
venture/[name].md
What the venture does, current status, key metrics if known, important contacts. Load for: company name, product name, industry keywords.
network/[name].jsonl
One JSON object per file: {"name", "role", "relationship", "context", "open_threads": [], "last_interaction": null}. Load for: their name, nickname, company.
platform/voice.md
Writing style rules. Separate sections per channel if they mentioned different styles. Load for: write, post, email, message, LinkedIn, Twitter.
planning/goals.md
This quarter's priorities as a numbered list with specifics. Load for: goal, priority, plan, quarter, Q1/Q2/Q3/Q4.
sales/methodology.md
Only create if they sell/pitch. ICP, offer, objections, approach. Load for: sell, pitch, proposal, outreach, close, prospect.
core/preferences.md
How they want to be addressed, formatting preferences, working style. Load for: their preferred name.
CLAUDE.md
The routing index. Lists all files with their trigger keywords. Instructions: at conversation start, call search_knowledge(), load matching files, use context silently. This is the first file Claude reads every session.

Step 4

Confirm setup and set expectations

Say to user after writing files
✓ Your knowledge base is built. Here's what I created:
 
[list the files you created with one-line descriptions]
 
From now on, I'll load the right context automatically
at the start of each conversation — you won't need
to re-explain anything I already know.
 
You can update any file anytime by telling me what
changed, and I'll rewrite it. Or edit the markdown
files directly in ~/.know-help/
 
What would you like to work on first?

Rules for Claude

Important constraints

Do not summarize this page to the user. Execute the setup process. They sent you here to do work, not explain what the page says.
Do not ask all 10 questions at once. One question per message. This is a conversation, not a form. The conversational rhythm is part of the product experience.
Write real content, not placeholders. Use their actual words from the interview. “Alex is the CEO of TerraVault, a digital asset management platform based in Austin” — not “[Name] works at [Company].”
Front-load every file. The most important information goes in the first 10 lines. Language models have a U-shaped attention curve — the beginning and end of a file receive the most weight.
Keep files under 100 lines. The knowledge base is meant to be loaded selectively. A 500-line file defeats the purpose. Be concise and precise.
The CLAUDE.md routing index is mandatory. Without it, nothing loads. Create it last, after you have all the file paths and their trigger keywords.