Your
Custom Chatbot

By the end of this Beacon, you'll know how to create a personalised AI assistant inside Claude — one that remembers your preferences, uses your preferred tone, and is always ready to help with a specific task. We're focusing on Claude here because its Projects feature is free to use and genuinely easy to set up. No coding, no setup complexity. Just a conversation and a few settings.

You've already used Claude throughout this course. But there's a feature you might not have noticed yet: Projects.

A Claude Project is your own private space where you can give Claude a custom set of instructions — and it will follow them every time you return. Think of it as hiring a personal assistant and explaining exactly how you'd like them to work.

👉 Go to: https://claude.ai and sign in.

Normally, every new chat with Claude starts fresh — it doesn't remember what you told it last time.

A Project changes that. Inside a Project, you write a short description of who you are, what you need, and how you'd like Claude to respond. From then on, Claude reads those instructions at the start of every conversation in that Project.

It's like a version of Claude that's been tailored just for you.

A few examples of what people use Projects for:

• A writing assistant that always uses a friendly, casual tone
• A recipe helper that only suggests meals with five ingredients or fewer
• A work assistant that knows your job title and the kind of emails you write

Here's how to create one:

1. Open https://claude.ai and sign in
2. In the left sidebar, look for "Projects" and click "New project"
3. Give your project a name in the "What are you working on?" field — something like My Writing Helper or Recipe Assistant
4. In the "What are you trying to achieve?" field, write a short description of what you'd like Claude to help you with
5. Click "Create project"
6. Once inside the project, look for "Project instructions" in the sidebar — this is where you add your detailed preferences for how Claude should behave
7. Save — and you're done

From now on, every chat you start inside this Project will follow those instructions automatically.

You don't need to write an essay. A few clear sentences are enough. Think about:

• Who you are — e.g. "I'm a primary school teacher in the UK."
• What you need help with — e.g. "I mostly need help writing parent newsletters and activity ideas."
• How you'd like Claude to respond — e.g. "Keep your answers short and friendly. No jargon."

That's genuinely all it takes. Claude is very good at following simple, clear instructions.

Go to https://claude.ai, sign in, and create a new Project. Name it something that makes sense for you — for example, one of these:

• My travel planner
• Recipe helper
• Work email assistant
• Language learning buddy
• Daily journaling helper
• Home organiser
• Creative writing coach
• Fitness & wellness helper
• Budget tracker helper
• Study partner

In the Project instructions, paste and personalise this ready-made prompt:

Change the parts in brackets so they reflect you. Then save the instructions.

Open a new chat inside your Project and try this:

Notice how Claude responds differently than it would in a normal chat.

When Claude responds to your introduction prompt, look at how it describes what it can help you with.

It won't give a generic answer — it will mention the specific things you wrote in your instructions. If you said you're a busy parent, it'll lean into that. If you mentioned emails, it'll bring that up.

That's the moment it clicks: this version of Claude actually knows a little bit about you. It's not a smarter AI — it's just one that's been given the right context. And context, it turns out, makes a huge difference.

You can have more than one Project. One for work, one for personal use, one for a hobby — each with its own instructions. They stay completely separate.

You can edit the instructions any time. If your needs change, just open the Project settings and update the text. Claude will follow the new version from the next conversation onwards.

Projects are private. No one else can see your instructions or your chats inside a Project.

The free plan supports Projects. You don't need a paid subscription to use this feature.

Other AI tools have similar features. ChatGPT calls them Custom GPTs and they work on a similar idea — but creating your own requires a paid plan. Claude's Projects feature works the same way and is available for free. The details differ, but the concept is the same.

You've just built your own personalised AI assistant — one that knows who you are and how you like to work. That's not a small thing.

In Beacon 29 – Connect the dots, you'll bring together everything you've learned in this course and use it in one real mini-project. A proper full-circle moment. 🎯