AI like an employee

Unzip the vault somewhere safe

You will end up owning this folder for years, so put it somewhere that syncs.

1. Download the zip and unzip it. You get a folder called Brain.
2. Move it to Documents, OneDrive, iCloud Drive or Dropbox. Anywhere that backs itself up.
3. Not the desktop of a laptop you might drop.

Open the folder in File Explorer or Finder and you can see every file as plain text. That is the whole point. No app owns your notes, and Claude can read them because they are just files.

Open it in Obsidian

Obsidian is a text editor that reads a folder on your computer. That is genuinely all it is. Nothing goes to a server and there is no account.

1. Download Obsidian from obsidian.md and install it.
2. Choose Open folder as vault, not create new vault.
3. Pick the Brain folder you just unzipped.
4. Open START HERE and follow it. It repeats the next three steps inside the vault so you are not switching between windows.

What is already in there

You do not have to build any of this. It is the part people give up on, so it is done. Here is what each piece is doing.

The underscore on _System is not decoration. It sorts that folder to the top of the sidebar, above everything else, so the important stuff is always the first thing you see.

Fill in the Knowledge Base

This is the only real writing you have to do, and it is the single highest leverage file in the whole setup.

Open _System/Knowledge Base/Knowledge Base.md and answer every heading. Real prices, real client names, the actual words you use.

# Knowledge Base

## The business
## Who I serve
## The problem I solve
## What I sell
## Pricing
## The guarantee
## How I talk
## Current clients and projects
## Decisions I do not want revisited

Be specific. "Small businesses" is not an answer. "Muslim coaches who have built an audience but have no system to convert it" is the level this needs.

Half an hour on this file removes most of the generic output people blame the model for.

Install Claude Code

This is the part people assume is hard. It is one line in a terminal.

Windows

Open PowerShell from the Start menu. Paste this, press Enter.

irm https://claude.ai/install.ps1 | iex

Mac

Open Terminal from Applications, Utilities. Paste, press Enter.

curl -fsSL https://claude.ai/install.sh | bash

If you already run Node 22 or later, npm install -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code works instead.

Point it at the vault and log in

Change the path to wherever you put the Brain folder.

cd C:\Users\you\Documents\Brain
claude

cd ~/Documents/Brain
claude

Your browser opens. Sign in with the Claude account you already pay for. The terminal says login successful, you press Enter, and you are in. Pro or Max both work. No API key, no per message billing.

Test that it worked

One question. You will know in five seconds.

Ask it something only your vault would know.

> What do I charge, and who is my client?

If it answers correctly without you pasting a single thing, the setup is live and you are done. Everything below is optional.

If it knows nothing, you started Claude Code in the wrong folder. Close it, cd into the Brain folder, and run claude again.

Add your own rules

A rule is behavior you would otherwise repeat in every conversation. Three came in the vault. Add a fourth only when something has annoyed you twice.

One file per rule in _System/Rules/. Short. What to do, and why.

# Short name for the rule

What to do, in one or two sentences.

Why: the reason, so future you does
not delete it by accident.

Mine include: never use em dashes. Push back on money and facts, never on taste. Save decisions without asking permission first. Every one of those exists because I corrected the same thing twice.

Turn repeats into skills

Not on day one. Do it the third time you explain the same job.

A skill is a folder with one file of instructions for one recurring task. Typing its name runs it. Mine cover call prep, proposals, deploying a site and writing outreach, because I was pasting the same context every single time.

They live outside the vault, in your Claude folder:

Windows  C:\Users\you\.claude\skills\
Mac      ~/.claude/skills/

one folder per skill, each with a SKILL.md inside

---
name: proposal
description: Write a client proposal using
  their real project file and my real prices
---

## Instructions

1. Read the client's file in Projects/
2. Read pricing from the Knowledge Base.
   Never quote a price from memory.
3. Use the structure of the last proposal
   I sent.
4. Save it to Projects/ and log it to
   today's Daily Log.

The three dashes and the two lines between them are required. Everything under the instructions heading is plain English.

Back it up properly

This folder becomes the most valuable thing you own within a month. Treat it that way.

If the vault sits in OneDrive, iCloud Drive or Dropbox you are already covered. If you want real version history so you can go back to any single day, put it in a private Git repository. Ask Claude Code to set that up for you from inside the vault. It takes about a minute and it walks you through it.

Either way, check it is actually syncing. Open the folder on your phone once. That is the whole test.

What to actually do now

The setup takes an hour. The useful part is what happens over the next five days.

Where people go wrong