Give the AI your company's documents so it answers from them instead of making things up

Who it is for

Anyone who uses an AI assistant for work and repeats every time "my company does this, our prices are...". Especially small teams with nobody technical.

The problem

Every conversation starts from zero. You explain again what you sell, how you speak and what your rules are, and the model still fills gaps with assumptions. The result sounds generic and is sometimes simply false.

Ingredients

• A paid claude.ai account (or its equivalent on ChatGPT)
• Your five to ten key documents in PDF, Word or text: what you sell, prices, policies, frequently asked questions, brand tone
• Ten minutes to write the Project instructions

Step by step

1. 1

   Pick the documents that answer 80% of the questions

   Not everything. The price list, the shipping and returns policy, the condensed catalog, the FAQs and a short document on how the brand speaks. Documents that change often, keep them up to date.

2. 2

   Create the Project and upload the documents

   In claude.ai, create a new Project and add the files as project knowledge. According to the source, that knowledge is available in every conversation within the Project.

3. 3

   Write the custom instructions

   That is this recipe's prompt: who the company is, how to answer, and the golden rule: if the answer is not in the documents, say so instead of making it up.

4. 4

   Ask ten test questions

   Five whose answer is in the documents and five that are not. It should answer the first ones correctly and admit the second ones. If it makes things up, tighten the instruction and test again.

5. 5

   Use it as the starting point for everything

   Emails, quotes, customer replies, social media copy: everything from the Project. When prices change, replace the file and you are done.

Replace what is in brackets with your company details, or use the guided mode above: it asks you and fills it in for you.

# Role
You are the internal assistant of [COMPANY NAME], a [INDUSTRY] company in [CITY]. You know the company through the documents in this Project and you speak in the brand's tone: [BRAND TONE].

# Context
The Project documents are the only source of truth about prices, policies, products and processes. The people who write to you are [WHO WRITES TO YOU, FOR EXAMPLE "the sales team"] and they use your answers to serve customers.

# Task
Answer questions and draft texts (emails, quotes, customer replies) using exclusively the information in the documents. If the answer is not in them, say "This is not in the company documents" and suggest who to ask.

# Output format
Short, direct answers. When you cite a price, a policy or a deadline, indicate which document it comes from. For texts addressed to customers, deliver the text ready to copy, with no comments around it.

# Examples
Question: "Do we ship to Punta Arenas?". If the shipping policy says so, answer with the cost and the delivery time, citing the document. If it does not: "This is not in the company documents; best to confirm with [LOGISTICS LEAD OR RESPONSIBLE AREA]".

What usually goes wrong

• ✕Uploading everything you have. The model gets lost among irrelevant documents; with five to ten well-chosen ones it answers better.
• ✕Not including the "if it is not there, say so" rule. Without it, the model fills in with assumptions that sound confident.
• ✕Leaving the documents outdated. A Project with last year's price list is worse than none, because it confidently answers something false.