Files, folders & a workspace that scales

Why folders are the foundation

What you walk away with: a standing workspace - five top-level folders, real projects moved in, conventions written down - that every later week builds inside. Claude Code works inside the folder you open it in: a clean workspace means it finds the right context fast; a junk drawer means it wastes effort and guesses. Everything you build in this course - skills, automations, the company brain - lives in folders.

This is the least exciting lesson in the course and one of the highest-return ones. Teams that skip it spend month two relocating everything.

The workspace layout

Here is the layout we set up with every client. Adapt the names to your business; keep the shape.

work/
  brain/                  # company knowledge: positioning, ICP, voice, SOPs
    CLAUDE.md             # the index - what lives where (week 2)
    reference/
    sops/
  projects/               # one folder per active project or client
    acme-onboarding/
    q3-outbound/
  automations/            # the systems you build in weeks 3-4
    weekly-report/
  inbox/                  # raw drops: exports, transcripts, downloads
  archive/                # done work, moved out of the way

• brain/ holds knowledge that should inform every session: who you are, who you sell to, how you write. It grows into your company brain in the Ops track.
• projects/ is one folder per real piece of work, each self-contained. Open Claude Code at the project level for project work.
• inbox/ is where raw material lands before it has a home. Empty it weekly - Claude is good at that job.
• archive/ keeps finished work out of Claude's way without deleting it.

Naming conventions that machines can rely on

• Lowercase with hyphens for folders and project files: acme-proposal-v2.md, not Acme Proposal FINAL (2).docx.
• Dates in ISO format, year first: 2026-06-10-pipeline-report.md. They sort correctly forever.
• Name by content, not by vibe: leads-enriched-2026-06.csv beats new-list-final.csv.
• One concept per file. A 40-page everything-doc is hard for both humans and agents to use.

Write your conventions down as a short file in the workspace root - five to ten lines. In week two it feeds straight into your CLAUDE.md, and from then on Claude applies your conventions automatically when it creates files.

What gets a git repo

Git is version control: a save-history for a folder, so you can see what changed and roll back. Week four teaches it properly. For now, just decide what deserves it: anything you would be upset to lose or overwrite - the brain, your automations, and any long-running project. The inbox and archive do not need it.

You do not need to learn git commands today. Claude Code runs git for you - you just need to know the concept exists and that your important folders should have it turned on by week four.

Meet the .claude folder

Inside any project, Claude Code reads a hidden folder named .claude. It is where configuration lives, and you will fill it in over the next three weeks. Just learn the map now.

.claude/
  settings.json          # permissions and config your team shares (week 2)
  settings.local.json    # your personal overrides, not shared
  skills/                # reusable procedures - skills (week 3)
  rules/                 # modular rule files (week 2)
  agents/                # custom subagents (later)
  hooks/                 # automation scripts around Claude's work (week 3)
CLAUDE.md                # project memory, sits next to .claude/ (week 2)

Do this now

Sources and further reading

• The .claude directory reference
• Claude Code documentation