Claude Project
What is a Claude project?
A Claude project is a feature available in Claude's web interface (claude.ai) and Claude Desktop that allows you to define custom instructions (system prompts) and upload files that are shared across all chats started inside that project. Projects provide a way to set up shared context across multiple chats, making your interactions with Claude more consistent for related tasks.
Claude projects are available with a paid subscription ($20/month) and work similarly to ChatGPT projects.
How do chats work within a Claude project?
When you create a Claude project, you can set up custom instructions and upload reference files once. Then, every new chat you start within that project has access to those instructions and files—you don't have to repeat your setup.
However, each chat within the project is separate from other chats. If you start one chat to analyze Competitor A and another chat to analyze Competitor B, those two chats don't know about each other. They both use the project's instructions and files, but they maintain independent conversation histories.
This separation means you can create fresh analyses for different topics while maintaining consistent instructions, but you'll need to start a new chat if you want to combine information from multiple previous chats.
What are the limitations of Claude projects?
Claude projects are stored at Anthropic (not on your local machine) and cannot be shared with other users. There's no API access to Claude projects, which means you can't programmatically access them or integrate them into other applications.
For prototyping and personal use, these limitations aren't usually a problem. But if you need to share your AI setup with others, access your context across multiple systems, or build production applications, you'll need to consider other approaches like Claude Code or building with the Claude API.
Learn more:
- Building My First AI Product: 6 Lessons from My 90-Day Deep Dive
- Behind the Scenes: Building the Product Talk Interview Coach
- Claude Code: What It Is, How It's Different, and Why Non-Technical People Should Use It
Related terms: