In my previous article, Why writing is becoming the most important skill in design, I argued that designers now create much of their value by making product thinking clear. Writing helps teams define the product, align on important decisions, and give AI the context it needs before anyone starts designing.
Jess Eddy
The harder question is how to turn clear product thinking into a context system that people and AI can actually use.
Designers and product leaders are developing lightweight context systems around Claude. They use files such as CLAUDE.md and product.md, along with Skills and project knowledge, to organize product thinking, visual guidance, working conventions, and reusable processes.
So, what do these systems look like, and what can we learn from them?
How people document context in practice
Each person below has found a unique approach to making knowledge, judgment, and working practices explicit. Some clarify product definition. Others organize reusable processes, explain Claude’s role in the work, or make design principles and collaboration expectations explicit.
These examples demonstrate how documentation actively shapes the design process.
Carmen Rincon: Keep product context and design guidance distinct
Carmen Rincon serves as senior design partner, co-founder, and product lead at Yummy Labs. She openly shares her Claude workflow for real design projects.
She assigns each type of context a clear location. She recommends keeping Project Instructions to around 200 to 400 words and reserving them for what Claude should always remember. The product.md file describes the problem, users, core flows, principles, current state, and scope.
Claude project
├── Project Instructions # Always relevant, around 200–400 words
├── Project Knowledge # Product context, tokens, design guidance
├── Skills # Reusable workflows
└── Current chat # Task-specific directionIn her framework, design tokens and broader design system guidance belong in project knowledge, reusable processes belong in Skills, and task-specific instructions belong in the chat. This keeps Project Instructions focused and avoids spending model tokens on information that does not apply to every conversation.
This clear division ensures the product definition remains accessible before creating screens.
Ron Yang: Assign each context type a clear place
Ron Yang is a product manager and founded mySecond, a shared system optimized for product teams.
His framework keeps CLAUDE.md brief, serving as an index to five focused files: company.md, product.md, personas.md, competitors.md, and goals.md. The “How to Work With Me” section outlines how Claude should structure recommendations, use customer language, and address assumptions.
your-project/
├── CLAUDE.md # The index — read automatically
├── context/
│ ├── company.md # Who you are
│ ├── product.md # What you've built
│ ├── personas.md # Who you serve
│ ├── competitors.md # Who you compete with
│ └── goals.md # What you're focused on nowThis organization makes product context easy to find, update, and reuse. It also keeps CLAUDE.md manageable and prevents it from becoming an unwieldy document.
Nick Babich: Give every kind of context a home
Nick Babich is a product designer, writer, and editor-in-chief of UX Planet. He regularly shares practical approaches for using Claude Code in product design.
