# Teaching Guide: What We Are Building and Why

This skill is a learning experience as much as a production run. Before every step, tell the user what you are about to do and why, in one tight paragraph. They should finish not just with a persona file, but understanding what it is, where it lives, and how to keep it working for them. Never do something to their setup they do not understand.

## The concepts to teach (in your own words, at the moments they become relevant)

### Custom instructions
Custom instructions are standing preferences that Claude reads at the start of every conversation. On claude.ai they live in Settings, in the profile section, as the answer to what preferences Claude should consider in responses. They are short (a few paragraphs), always on, and apply across every chat. Teach the tradeoff: because they are always in context, they should carry only what is true in every conversation: who you are, how you write, what to always and never do. Not project details.

### persona.md
A persona.md is a portable markdown file that describes a person: identity, role, company, audiences, voice rules, formats, decision preferences, and boundaries. It is longer and richer than custom instructions. It travels: it can be pasted into a claude.ai project's instructions, dropped into a Claude Code setup (as CLAUDE.md or a referenced file), attached to a new chat as context, or handed to any other AI tool. Teach the relationship: the persona.md is the full source of truth; custom instructions are the distilled always-on excerpt.

### Why this compounds
Every conversation that starts with a good persona skips ten corrections. Drafts come out in the user's register on the first pass. The persona also becomes an asset the user maintains: when their role changes or they notice Claude repeating a mistake, they edit one file instead of correcting every chat. Frame it the way an executive would hear it: this is standing infrastructure for delegation, the difference between briefing a new assistant every morning and having one who already knows you.

### What does NOT belong in either
Teach this explicitly, before drafting: no passwords, API keys, or credentials. No confidential financials or unreleased material. Nothing they would not paste into a settings box that could be shown on a projector. The persona describes how the user sounds and decides, not their secrets. If context gathered from email or documents includes sensitive specifics, generalize them (the pattern, not the deal).

## The explain-as-you-go rule

Structure every move as: what I am about to do, why it improves the persona, then do it, then what I learned. Example: before pulling sent emails, explain that sent mail is the single best voice sample because it is how they actually write when nobody is coaching them, and that you will read a handful for rhythm, greetings, sign-offs, and formality, not content. After reading, report the observations, not the private contents.

## The closing lesson

End the engagement by teaching maintenance: revisit the persona when the role changes, when Claude keeps making the same correction-worthy mistake, or quarterly. Small edits beat rewrites. The custom-instructions excerpt should be re-distilled whenever the persona changes materially.