Every AI chat has the same problem. You spend twenty minutes explaining who you are, what you do and how you like things done, the chat gets long, the AI starts forgetting the beginning, and next week you open a new one and explain it all again. I hit that wall hard enough this year that I built a way around it, and it is the single most useful thing I have set up in AI.
It is a folder on my computer full of plain text files. That is genuinely all it is. One file is the rulebook, one is the memory, a few hold the deep facts about my life and business, and each area of my life gets its own little folder with its own rules. The AI reads the folder at the start of every chat and instantly knows my whole world, and at the end of every chat it writes down what happened. I call it my Cowork OS because I built it in Claude Cowork, but the same folder works in ChatGPT too, and this guide covers both.
Here's how it works, how to set yours up, and the one prompt that builds the whole thing for you while you talk. It works even if you have never opened a text file in your life, and it takes about 45 minutes.
The plan · 45 minutes, 1 prompt
Before you start
Claude
a paid plan and the desktop app on your computer. The folder part runs in Cowork, which the free plan does not have.
ChatGPT
Plus or higher and the ChatGPT desktop app on your computer, the one from July that has Chat, Work and Codex in a single app. The folder part only works in the desktop app.
An empty folder on your Desktop called Cowork OS, and about 45 minutes you can split across a few sittings.
Understand the four pieces
You do not have to build any of this by hand, the prompt in Step 3 does it, but you should know what is in the folder, because it is the reason the system works.
Two rules make it hold together. Every fact lives in exactly one file and everything else points to it, so nothing ever contradicts itself. And the rulebook tells the AI to open a workspace's guide and memory before working in that area, because only the top file loads on its own.
Rick's tip
That last rule is the one I got wrong first. I originally gave every workspace its own CLAUDE.md, assuming they would all load automatically. They do not. The nested ones drop out silently, especially once a chat gets long. Only the top file is the constitution. Every workspace rulebook is a plain guide.md, and the constitution's map says "read it first." Reading a file is reliable. Hoping it auto-loads is not.
Give the AI a folder
In Claude. Open the Claude desktop app, select Cowork in the message box, click "Work in a project or folder" in the prompt bar, and pick your empty Cowork OS folder. Picking it is what gives Claude permission to read and write inside it, and if your computer shows a popup asking whether Claude can use that folder, approving it is the whole point. Claude can only see folders you connect, and it always asks before deleting anything. From now on you connect this same folder, the whole folder and never a subfolder, at the start of every session.
In ChatGPT. Open the ChatGPT desktop app and, from the start screen, open a folder, or create a project and use Edit project, then Add folder, to attach your empty Cowork OS folder. If you attach more than one, point at this one and choose Make primary, because the primary folder is the one ChatGPT reads the rulebook from automatically. Then use the Chat and Work toggle at the top of the page to switch to Work, and keep "Work locally" selected, since that is the mode that can read and change files on your computer. The default permission setting, Ask for approval, lets it edit files inside this folder and asks before it goes anywhere else. ChatGPT on the web and on your phone cannot reach a folder at all, so the setup happens on the computer.
Either way, one thing matters: it is a fresh, empty folder that lives on your computer. Not your Documents folder, not your Desktop. A dedicated one, so the AI never has to guess which of your files matter.
Paste the setup prompt and talk
This is the entire build. You paste the prompt below into a new chat that is connected to your folder, and the AI becomes your onboarding coach. It checks the folder works, explains the system in plain English, asks whether you would rather talk than type, imports whatever your other AI app already knows about you, offers to connect your email and calendar so it can learn how you actually write and who you meet, then interviews you in rounds until it genuinely knows enough. Then it builds every file, teaches the files your voice, bakes in the daily habits, checks its own work, and tells you when you are done.
You never read the prompt. You never write a file. You just talk, and the more you ramble the better the result.
Two things about that prompt. It saves as it goes, so if the chat dies halfway through, you open a new chat, connect the same folder, paste the same prompt, and it picks up at the exact step you left off. And it decides for itself when it knows enough, using a four-question test (could it draft a message in your voice, does it know your people, does it know what is in motion in each area, does it know your boundaries), so you are not stuck answering questions for two hours.
Rick's tip
If you already use ChatGPT or Claude a lot, do not skip the import step. Asking your old AI app "tell me everything you know and remember about me" and pasting the answer over gives the new system months of context in one move, and the interview gets noticeably shorter.
Use it every day
The setup is the easy part. What makes it compound is four habits, and the prompt writes them into your rulebook so the AI holds you to them.
After a few weeks something strange happens: the AI starts being right about you before you explain. It drafts the email the way you would have written it, it knows your editor's name, and it reminds you that the invoice you are about to chase was already paid, because it was there when that happened.
Rick's tip
Keep the top file under 200 lines, always. The moment it turns into an essay the AI starts skimming it. Rules and pointers at the top, facts in the resources, logs in the memory. If you ever find the same fact in two files, pick one and make the other one point to it. And if you use both tools on the same folder, keep AGENTS.md as the real rulebook and add a one-line CLAUDE.md that just says @AGENTS.md, which is Anthropic's own recipe for making Claude read it too.
The Honest Part
This system lives on your computer, so it works fully on your computer. On your phone the AI can still chat and still has its own built-in memory, but it cannot open the folder, so anything important from a phone conversation gets told to the desktop version next time. In Claude the folder mode needs a paid plan, and in ChatGPT it needs Plus or higher plus the desktop app. One more honest note on ChatGPT: OpenAI documents the automatic rulebook read for the Codex side of the app, and Work mode follows it in my experience and other people's, but if it ever seems to have forgotten the rules, say "read AGENTS.md first" and it will. And it is only as good as what you tell it: the interview is the product, so babble, ramble and over-share.
Make the empty folder now, paste the prompt, and talk to it like a new assistant on their first day. That is exactly what it is, except this one never forgets the briefing.