The Claude Context Template for Students and Junior Professionals
Stop re-introducing yourself every session. Write your context once, paste it in, and get outputs that sound like you from the first message.
What you'll get out of this: A blank context template to fill in once and reuse across every Claude session, plus a filled-in example showing what good looks like before you write yours.
Every Claude session, I used to spend the first few messages explaining who I was.
My role. What I was working on. How I like things structured.
It's not a lot of effort each time. But it adds up. And the outputs you get from a Claude that knows nothing about you are noticeably worse than one that has even basic context.
So I stopped doing that. I wrote my context once, saved it, and now I paste it in or load it into a Claude Project before I start working. Every session starts like we've already met.
This is the template I use, plus a blank version you can fill in yourself.
What this actually solves
When you open a fresh Claude conversation, it has zero context about you. It doesn't know:
what you do
what kind of work you're producing
who your audience is
how you like things structured
what tone sounds like you vs. what sounds like a robot
So it guesses. And it guesses generic.
You get outputs that are technically fine but feel like they were written for no one in particular. Then you spend three follow-up messages saying "no, more like this" and "actually, I should have mentioned..."
A context template skips all of that. You define the important stuff once, and Claude starts from a much better place every time.
This isn't complicated. It's just a thing most people don't bother doing, and then they wonder why their outputs feel flat.
How it works
1
Write it once
Fill in the seven sections about who you are and how you work
2
Save it
Keep it in a note, a doc, or a Claude Project
3
Load before each session
Paste it in or let your Project handle it automatically
The difference context makes
Same request. Different starting point.
Without context
You
Help me draft a follow-up email after a property tour with a client.
Claude responds
Subject: Thank You for the Property Tour
Dear [Client Name],
Thank you for taking the time to tour the property with me today. I hope you found it informative and that the property meets your requirements.
Please do not hesitate to reach out if you have any questions or would like to schedule a follow-up meeting to discuss next steps.
Best regards, [Your Name]
With context
You
Help me draft a follow-up email after a property tour with a client.
Claude responds
Subject: Following up on 45 Colborne St tour
Hi Sarah,
Good meeting you at the Colborne St space this morning. A few things I want to flag while they're fresh:
The floor plate works well for your headcount, but the HVAC on the third floor is worth a second look before you commit. I'll pull the building condition report and send over the relevant sections by end of day.
I'm also going to run a quick comparison against two other options in the King West corridor that hit similar price-per-square-foot. Should have that to you by Thursday.
Lily
The blank template
Copy this. Fill it in. Save it somewhere you can grab it quickly.
Template structure at a glance
Context template structure
Seven sections. A few sentences each. Save it once, reuse it everywhere.
1
Who I am
Name, role, year, what frames your perspective
2
What I'm working on right now
Active projects, courses, internships, jobs
3
How I'll use Claude most often
Research, writing, analysis, brainstorming, prep
4
My audience
Who reads, reviews, or receives what you make
5
Tone and style preferences
How you want things to sound, plus what you hate
6
What I don't want
Specific patterns, phrases, formats to avoid
7
Context that helps
Industry, tools, detail level, pet peeves
Blank template · Copy and fill in
# Context Template
## Who I am
[Your name, what you study or do, year/level, anything that frames your perspective]
## What I'm working on right now
[Current projects, jobs, internships, courses (whatever is active)]
## How I'll use Claude most often
[The kinds of tasks you actually bring to Claude: research, writing, analysis,
brainstorming, prep, etc.]
## My audience (when I'm writing or producing something)
[Who reads or receives what you make: professors, clients, teammates,
followers, hiring managers]
## Tone and style preferences
[How you want things to sound: casual, direct, structured, conversational, etc.
Include things you hate.]
## What I don't want
[Specific patterns to avoid: jargon, filler, generic language, certain formats, etc.]
## Context that helps
[Anything else that makes your outputs better: industry, tools you use,
level of detail you prefer, pet peeves]
That's it. Fill in each section with a few sentences. You don't need paragraphs. You need enough that Claude can make meaningfully better guesses about what you want.
My filled-in version
Here's what mine actually looks like. I use this (or a version of it) in my Claude Projects and paste it into standalone sessions when I'm doing focused work.
Lily's filled-in version · Use as a reference
# Context Template: Lily Papadopoulos
## Who I am
Lily Papadopoulos. Fourth-year Real Estate co-op student at the University of Guelph.
Currently interning at a CRE advisory firm in Toronto. Building lilyp.ai, a resource
site about practical AI workflows for students and early-career professionals.
## What I'm working on right now
- lilyp.ai content library (articles, prompts, build walkthroughs)
- LinkedIn content about AI workflows and what I'm building
- CRE research and analysis at my internship
- Exploring automation workflows with Claude for real estate tasks
## How I'll use Claude most often
Writing drafts, structuring ideas, research synthesis, building prompt workflows,
editing, brainstorming content angles, prepping for meetings, and sometimes just
thinking through a problem out loud.
## My audience (when I'm writing or producing something)
Peers, students, early-career professionals. People who are curious about AI but
aren't sure how it fits into their actual work. They're smart but not technical.
They don't want to be sold on AI. They want to see what's actually useful.
## Tone and style preferences
Warm, direct, specific. First person. Short sentences. I want things to sound like
I wrote them, not like AI helped. Conversational but not sloppy. Confident without
being loud. I'd rather sound like a person than a publication.
## What I don't want
- Corporate jargon (leverage, synergize, game-changer, unlock, streamline)
- Em dashes
- Rhetorical questions
- "In today's fast-paced world" energy
- Overly polished or formal language
- Generic advice that could apply to anyone
- Filler paragraphs
## Context that helps
I work in commercial real estate, so my examples often involve lease analysis,
comp research, market reports, and client-facing memos. I use Claude (not GPT)
as my primary AI tool. I care about things being useful and specific more than
comprehensive. I'd rather ship something small and real than plan something big
and theoretical.
You'll notice it's not long. It doesn't need to be. The point is to give Claude enough to stop guessing about the basics so you can focus on the actual task.
How to adapt this to your own situation
A few things worth thinking about when you fill yours in:
Be specific about what you don't want. This is the section that makes the biggest difference. Claude is great at following instructions, but it's even better at avoiding things when you name them explicitly. If you hate bullet-point-only responses, say that. If you never want to see the word "utilize," say that.
Update "what I'm working on" regularly. Swap it out every few weeks, or whenever your projects shift. The rest of the template stays stable. This is the one section that drifts.
Don't overthink the tone section. Two or three sentences about how you like things to sound is enough. If you're not sure, paste in something you've written that felt right and say "match this tone."
Skip sections that don't apply. If you're using Claude mostly for personal work and there's no real audience, leave that blank. The template is a starting point, not a form to complete.
Where to put it
Two options:
Option 1
Claude Projects
Paste your context into the project instructions. Every conversation in that project starts with your context already loaded. This is what I do for lilyp.ai work.
Option 2
Paste it manually
In a regular Claude conversation, paste your context at the top of the first message with a note like "Here's context about me and how I work. Use this to inform everything in this conversation." Then ask your actual question below it.
Option 1 is cleaner. Option 2 works fine if you don't want to set up a project for everything.
Where to start
Copy the blank template. Set a five-minute timer. Fill it in with whatever comes to mind. Don't edit it. Just get something down.
Then open Claude, paste it in, and ask it to do something you'd normally ask it to do. Compare the output to what you'd get without context.
That's the whole thing. Five minutes of setup, and every session after that starts better.
Written by
Lily Papadopoulos
Fourth-year Real Estate co-op student at the University of Guelph, currently interning at a CRE advisory firm in Toronto. Building lilyp.ai: a library of practical AI workflows for students and early-career professionals.
Found this useful?
Tell me what's slowing you down.
If you're copying and pasting the same thing more than twice a week, there's probably a workflow for it. I build these things. Ask me.
