How Claude Code Became My Knowledge Management System

Claude Code is fantastic for coding, and I’ve been using it for that for a while. But in the last couple months I also started using it as my knowledge management system: client documentation, meeting notes, email drafts, and project organization. It’s completely changed how I work.

Unlike ChatGPT, Claude Code runs locally and can see all your files. It searches folders, processes multiple documents, and learns from how you use it without uploading anything to chat projects.

You can set it up so that it learns from the way you’re using it and documents those learnings and instructions that it will follow later. It has this interesting compounding effect.

How Claude Code Actually Works

At a high level, Claude Code:

• Lives on your computer instead of in a web browser, so it can see all your files and folders
• Reads instructions you’ve written for it and helps you capture new instructions in files that live on your computer (your personal preferences, project-specific guidelines, writing style preferences)
• Can be set up to only access certain files or folders if you want to limit what it sees
• Automatically picks up on the context and instructions for whatever project you’re working on
• Can be customized with different specialized assistants for different types of work

The system is fairly configurable with what instructions you put in. You can essentially use it however you want by setting up project-specific context and guidelines.

Here’s how I’ve chosen to configure it based on my consulting workflow:

• CLAUDE.md files in each client folder - these are the instruction files that Claude reads to understand your preferences. They contain client background, communication preferences, document templates, business terms, and writing style guidelines. You can update these over time as Claude learns more about how you want to work.
• Automatic work log generation - I’ve set up triggers so it updates client work logs after substantial work (meetings, documents, research) with structured summaries that build context over time
• Smart commit messages - It’s instructed to analyze file changes and create detailed notes about what changed and why (more on this later when I explain version tracking)
• To-do list automation - It helps me generate and maintain client-specific to-do lists that stay organized based on the progress I’m making within the tool
• Structured document workflows - Meeting notes get stored with specific naming conventions and automatically trigger work log updates; project documents reference previous meetings and link to related materials
• Complete change history - Using Git (like “track changes” but for entire folders of documents), it can review how projects evolved and understand why decisions were made
• Cross-project pattern recognition - I can generalize templates across different projects, and the documentation from different projects can interact with each other, letting me ask questions about both when projects are related or one requires context about the other

These components work together to create something that feels almost like having a business partner who never forgets anything. There’s a sense of continuity and a lightweight organizational structure of documents that I can repurpose and reuse. The context makes the feedback loop extremely valuable.

The more I use it, the more I build better processes and patterns into it that compound on each other. This compounding effect is what sets Claude Code apart from other AI tools. Every document I create, every process I refine, every instruction I capture becomes part of a growing knowledge base that makes the next interaction more valuable. Unlike static tools or isolated chat sessions, this system gets better at helping me the longer I use it.

I also like that it’s a command line tool with limited distractions - you’re really just focused on the work and the text and the output of documentation versus some flashy UI.

Example: After client meetings, I record myself talking through what happened. Then I transcribe it and have Claude Code turn that rambling audio into a structured meeting summary using the format I’ve defined in my CLAUDE.md files. It stores it in the right place and updates the client’s work log. Takes five minutes instead of thirty.

Getting Started: What to Expect

Claude Code requires some upfront thinking because it’s a very flexible tool. It really comes down to how you want to organize your work and how good you are at capturing instructions in your CLAUDE.md files. You have to be thoughtful about how you want to structure things.

The nice thing is these instructions aren’t set in stone. After making progress on a project and Claude’s learned something about how you want to work, you can simply ask it to update those instruction files based on the work you’ve already done. It becomes a collaborative process of refining how you work together.

It’s not for everybody because some people want a tool that just decides for you how it’s going to work. This gives you a lot of flexibility, but because of that, it allows you to build a purpose-built knowledge tracking system.

The good news is there are more and more people using Claude Code for knowledge work, and they’re sharing their approaches on Twitter and various other sites. They’re sharing their CLAUDE.md files and workflows, so you can find things that are working for other people and integrate them into your system. If you start using it and get excited about its capabilities, you can go look for other people solving problems that you want to solve too.

What I’m describing here is actually only scraping the surface of its capabilities, which is part of the fun as you become a power user. For example, if you’re using tools like Notion or Google Docs, you can integrate them into Claude Code using something called MCP so it can search those knowledge bases too. This is just one example of many other functionalities you discover once you get started. It’s honestly kind of like a video game where you keep unlocking new capabilities.

If you’re curious about trying this, Claude Code has a straightforward getting started guide, and you can use it for anything you’d normally do with ChatGPT. The key insight: any work that involves creating, organizing, or referencing multiple documents gets dramatically better when AI can see your actual files and remember your context.

Start small. Try it for one type of document or one project. Set up a simple folder structure and see what happens. The compounding value becomes obvious pretty quickly.

The Meta Part

I used Claude Code to help me write this post about Claude Code.

It read through my actual documentation system to understand how I’ve been organizing everything. It searched through my work logs, project files, and CLAUDE.md instructions to pull out examples of how I’m using the system. When I said “make this sound more like me,” it could actually do it because it had read my previous blog posts. It helped me explain my own workflow back to me in a way that would make sense to other people.

The whole process of writing about the tool while using the tool to understand how I use the tool? Pretty meta, but also the perfect demonstration of what I’m talking about.