Context: the assistant only knows what you tell it

The assistant has read the internet. It has not read your project. “Context” is everything you put in front of it before you ask - the text, the files, the instructions it can see in this conversation. Nothing else exists to it. This is the single idea that separates people who get value from people who get fluff, and a PM already owns the perfect context documents.

The context stack you already own

In order of value, the documents that make an answer about your project rather than about projects in general:

1. The charter - who, why, and what done looks like.
2. The stakeholder register - roles and what each cares about, with names removed or replaced (see what never goes in).
3. The WBS or the milestone list.
4. The last two status reports - they carry the house style.
5. The meeting notes - raw is fine.
6. The risk register.

How to give it: paste, upload, or a workspace

A one-off question: paste the relevant paragraph. Anything you will come back to: upload the documents into a project workspace once, and every later question is already in context (four ways to ask explains the workspace).

How much is enough

Too little context and the answer is generic. Too much and the assistant loses track of the early part - every conversation has a capacity, and Claude’s help notes that its paid plans switch projects to a retrieval mode to stretch it. The mechanism is an aside; the practice is: give it the charter, not the 300-page tender.

Say who is asking, who is reading, and what you want back

One sentence changes everything downstream: “I am the PM. This goes to the sponsor, who is not technical, reads on a phone and has three minutes.” Then the format: a table, one page, Macedonian, bullet points with an owner and a date on each line.

Ask it what it is missing

The cheap, reliable improvement most people never try. Before it drafts anything: