CLAUDE.md: set the trajectory

Build-along · ~10 min at your own keyboard

CLAUDE.md is read before message one. It's the heading you set leaving the dock. A one-degree error at departure lands you in the wrong county, and small instructions compound the same way across a long session. For a broker, this file holds your voice, your product type, your market, and the line you never cross between an opinion of value and an appraisal. Other coding tools read a similar file called AGENTS.md; same idea, different name.

Where these ideas come from: AGENTS.md (AI Hero dictionary). Paraphrased here.

Your starter: CLAUDE.md for a deal desk

Instructions

Make it yours: Write your asset classes and markets into the brackets, keep the never-lines your principal would enforce, and cut it to the lines you would defend in an investment committee.

# CLAUDE.md

## WHO I AM
- [Role and shop: e.g. acquisitions analyst, value-add multifamily, two metros]
- [Deal size band and the two investor types we answer to]

## HOW I UNDERWRITE
- Every input in a model has a source and a date beside it. No number without a source and a date.
- Rent, expense and cap assumptions are labelled ASSUMPTION until a comp or a T-12 replaces them.
- A memo states the downside case before the base case.

## NEVER
- Never invent a comp, a tenant, a lease term or a sale. Write [SOURCE NEEDED: item].
- Never round a number that came from a document; quote it.
- Never send anything to an investor, broker or lender. I send.

The coach checks that what you paste back is your own work. The starter pasted back unchanged won't pass.

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Paste your 5 CLAUDE.md bullets and one line on what the fresh session did differently.