context/people.md

people.md is so Claude knows who’s who without you explaining each time. When you say “Lisa thinks we should push the launch”, Claude should already know who Lisa is.

It’s the most time-consuming context file to write because the list is long. The discipline is to start with a focused subset and grow the file organically — don’t try to capture everyone you’ve ever exchanged emails with.

What to include

• Name, role, and organisation
• Your relationship — direct report, manager, client primary contact, etc.
• Communication style notes when relevant (formal, brief, reads everything carefully, never reads attachments)
• For external contacts, the current engagement context

What to exclude

• Personal information about colleagues you wouldn’t share publicly (health, family situations, performance issues)
• Subjective judgements you wouldn’t want surfaced (“annoying”, “incompetent”, “junior”)
• Anyone you don’t actually interact with regularly enough to need recognition
• Role information that’s likely to be wrong — if you’re not sure of someone’s current title, leave it blank rather than guess

Template

# People

## Internal — my team
- [Name], [Role]. [What they own]. Comms style: [brief / formal / etc]
- ...

## Internal — leadership
- [Name], [Title]. [Their priorities, any context that shapes how
  I write to them]
- ...

## Internal — cross-functional partners
- [Name], [Role], [Team]. [Why we interact]
- ...

## External — top-tier clients
- [Company]:
  - [Name], [Role] — primary contact
  - [Name], [Role] — secondary
  - Current engagement: [brief]
  - Last meaningful interaction: [date, topic]

## External — recurring contacts
- [Industry analysts, journalists, partners — names and orgs]

## Recruiters / external opportunities
- [Names of recruiters I'm in touch with, with rough context]

Where to start

A focused first version covers four groups:

1. Your direct team (everyone who reports to you and your manager)
2. Top-three leadership contacts (manager’s manager, and their peers you interact with)
3. Top three to five external clients with one or two contacts each
4. Three to five recurring cross-functional partners

That’s typically 15 to 25 entries. Anything beyond that can be added when the person first appears in an inbox triage and Claude flags them as unknown.

The unknown-sender feedback loop

The triage workflow flags senders not in people.md when they appear in consequential emails. Those flags are the input to maintenance — a name that’s flagged twice in a fortnight should be added to the file.

This means the file grows in proportion to your real contact graph rather than your idea of it. The version after six months of use is meaningfully different from the version you wrote on day one, and considerably more useful.

What “comms style” notes look like in practice

The notes that earn their place in the file are the ones that change how a draft is written:

• “Reads every word carefully — don’t bury the ask in paragraph three”
• “Replies in single sentences — match that”
• “Prefers calls over email for anything substantive — flag when an email is the wrong medium”
• “Always reads on mobile — keep it short”

Generic notes like “professional” or “friendly” don’t change Claude’s drafting. Skip them.