Quick Start · v1 · Internal
Working in the Vault
Everything we know as a company — what we're building, who for, what we've decided and why — lives in one place: the Vault. This is the short guide to using it. Werner gets Will set up; Will gets the rest of us set up. Once you're in, this is all you need to start.
Don't try to learn it all at once. Read this once, get set up, then learn the rest by using it. If you're ever unsure where something goes or how to do a thing — ask Claude. That's the whole point of it.
What the Vault is
Think of it as the company's shared brain. Not a dumping ground for files — a single, organised source of truth that we and Claude both work from. Two things make it more than a folder of documents:
- It's the one source of truth. When something's decided, it's written down here, once. No hunting through inboxes, no "which version is latest", no knowledge trapped in one person's head.
- Claude knows it. When you work with Claude in the Vault, it can read everything in here — our context, decisions, brand, customers. So the answers you get are ours, not generic. The more we keep it current, the sharper Claude gets for all of us.
You don't need to understand the whole structure. You need to know: things have a home, Claude knows where, and you can always ask.
Getting set up
Light touch, and you won't do it alone:
- Werner sets up Will. Will gets connected to the Vault and to Cowork, and walks through this guide.
- Will sets up everyone else. Same thing — connected, walked through, first task done together.
- Your first job, with whoever's setting you up: open Cowork, ask Claude one real question about your own lane, and write your first daily note. That's it — you're working in the Vault.
If anything about access or sync isn't behaving, that's a Vanessa/Will fix — not something to wrestle with alone.
Finding what you need
You almost never need to go folder-diving. The fastest way to find anything is to ask Claude in Cowork — "where's the latest on the retirement planner?", "what did we decide about the November launch?", "pull up our ICP for Unlock." It searches the whole Vault and brings back the current version.
If you do want to look yourself, the top level is organised by what kind of thing it is:
| If you're after… | Look in |
|---|---|
| Who we are, our customers, our team, the strategy | Context |
| A specific company's work — Unlock, the agency, EUK | Companies |
| Decisions, research, meeting notes, market intel | Intelligence |
| Live pieces of work | Projects |
| Day-to-day notes | Daily |
| Team profiles, tasks, handovers | Team |
| Reusable tools, frameworks, templates | Resources |
| The skills Claude can run | Skills |
One rule worth knowing: we never overwrite, we supersede. The newest version is always live; old ones are kept, not deleted. So if you find two of something, the higher version number wins — and nothing's ever truly lost.
Adding to it
If you learn something the company should keep — a decision, useful research, notes from a call, a finished piece of work — it belongs in the Vault, not in your head or your inbox.
The easy way: tell Claude what it is, and let it file it. "Save these meeting notes." "Log this decision about the demo time." "File this research." Claude knows the structure and puts it in the right place, named the right way. You don't have to learn the filing system.
Three things to hold onto
- Supersede, don't overwrite. Changed your mind? New version, kept alongside the old. Claude handles the version numbers.
- Don't delete. If something's no longer right, it gets retired, not binned. We keep our history.
- If in doubt, put it in. Better in the Vault and tidied later than lost. Claude will help you place it.
Chat or Cowork — when to use which
You've got two ways to work with Claude. Same Claude — different reach. Knowing which to reach for saves you time.
Chat
Thinking & quick answers
A normal conversation — fast, no access to our files. Your sounding board. Nothing it makes is saved to the Vault.
Reach for it to
- Think out loud or brainstorm an approach
- Draft a paragraph or an email
- Get something explained
- Get a quick answer, fast
Cowork
Making & touching our stuff
Claude working inside the Vault on your machine. It reads our files, runs our skills, and produces finished documents that land in the Vault.
Reach for it to
- Make a real deliverable — doc, report, brief
- Find or update anything in the Vault
- Run a skill
- Save your work where it belongs
Rule of thumb: thinking or a quick answer → Chat. Making something, or anything that touches the Vault → Cowork. When in doubt, Cowork — it can always do what Chat does, plus the rest.
Pulling on skills
Skills are the bit that makes this more than "chatting to an AI." A skill is a pre-built routine that makes Claude do a specific job to our standard — the way we'd want it done, every time. We've already built a stack of them.
A few you'll meet
- Grade a batch of calls against the script.
- Draft a report in the right brand voice.
- Build a brief to hand something over to Werner or an investor.
- Turn a messy transcript into clean notes, decisions and tasks.
- Run the numbers on a spreadsheet and tell you what they say.
How to use one: you don't need to memorise names. In Cowork, just describe what you want — "grade these calls", "write this up as a report", "turn this transcript into notes" — and Claude reaches for the right skill. Or type / to see them by name. Not sure one exists? Ask: "is there a skill for this?"
The habit worth building: before you do a fiddly, repeatable job by hand, ask whether there's a skill for it. Usually there is — and if there isn't and it's worth repeating, we can build one.
The house rules
Five things, and you're away:
- Ask Claude first. Where does this go, what did we decide, is there a skill for this — it's faster than guessing.
- Keep it current. A Vault that's up to date makes Claude sharper for everyone. Stale knowledge makes us all slower.
- Supersede, don't overwrite. Never delete. New versions live alongside the old.
- Let Claude file it. Don't fret about the structure — describe what it is, and it'll place it.
- If it's worth keeping, put it in. Knowledge in the Vault compounds. Knowledge in your inbox doesn't.
That's it. You'll learn the rest by doing — and Claude's right there whenever you're stuck.