Case study · Project
Separating your projects by hat
One single conversation for everything, then six workspaces: academic, consulting, finances, personal, family, system. How to divide things up, which boundaries to write down, and what got stuck.
Idea
What problem, in one sentence?
State the problem in one sentence
“In the same conversation, I go from a manuscript to an invoice and then to a train ticket, and Claude mixes up the instructions.” The problem is not the tool, it is the lack of boundaries between hats.
DifficultyAcademic instructions applied to consulting work for a company, and vice versa.
SolutionOne workspace per hat, each with its own instructions and documents.
!One hat, one context; a conversation that drifts from one hat to another is restarted elsewhere.
Concept
What will the tool be, and what will it do?
Choose the hats
Start from your actual activity, not from an organization chart: academic (clinical care, teaching, research), consulting and expert work, finances, personal, family, and a “system” space for everything that concerns the organization itself (rules, skills, routines).
What to tell Claude“Here is a month of my requests to Claude. Propose a division into four to six hats, with, for each one, what it covers, what it excludes and an example request.”
DifficultyTen hats at the start, half of which were never used.
SolutionMerge until every space is opened at least once a week.
Write the assignment rule
A simple rule, written once: the assignment follows the payer, not the tool. An article review for a journal goes into academic; the same review paid for by a company goes into consulting, even if the same skill does the work.
DifficultyMixed files (a conference funded by a company, a lecture paid separately).
SolutionThe file follows the main payer; the other hat receives a simple cross-reference.
!Without a written rule, every mixed file becomes a hesitation again.
Declare the boundaries
For each hat: what it covers, what it explicitly excludes, and which other space it refers to. The academic orchestrator, for example, excludes consulting and accounting and says so in plain words.
Build
What to ask Claude, in what order?
Create one space per hat
One Claude project per hat, with its instructions (who I am in this role, specific rules, tone), its reference documents and its preferred skills. Common rules (never delete, never send without approval) stay in the general preferences.
DifficultyThe same instructions copied into every project, then diverging.
SolutionCommon rules in a single place; each project contains only what is specific to it.
Organize files and skills along the same map
File folders follow the same hats; each skill is attached to one hat, and a building block shared between two hats is declared as such.
DifficultyFiles from one hat found in another hat's folder.
SolutionA file profile before any filing; when in doubt, the file stays where it is and a question is asked.
!Do not move anything in bulk; sort as you go, with validation.
Test
How do you prove it works?
Check that each request lands in the right place
Over two weeks, note each request and the space where it was handled. Any misplaced request becomes an example added to the boundaries of the hat concerned.
DifficultyQuick requests made from the phone, outside any project.
SolutionA reception conversation that qualifies the request and says in which space to pick it up.
Go live
How to deliver, publish and sustain it?
A monthly check
Once a month, the cross-inventory checks that no file straddles two hats, that no rule is duplicated and that no space has stayed empty. Discrepancies are proposed, never corrected automatically.
!Health data and financial data never meet in the same space.
Make it a shareable architecture
The map of hats, the assignment rule and the boundaries form a model a colleague can reuse: they keep the structure and replace the content.