Been using claude.ai for personal projects for a while and honestly built a pretty janky system to make it work. Basically I had one permanent “main chat” where I’d plan everything out — architecture, phases, what order to build things. Then for each feature I’d ask Claude to write me a detailed implementation prompt, copy it, paste it into a brand new chat, build the feature there, then ask for a summary of what was done, push to GitHub, add the repo + summary as Project Knowledge, go back to main chat and repeat. It worked but it was exhausting. Constant copy-pasting, re-explaining context, manually maintaining summary files. Once I actually looked into Claude Code I realised the whole thing maps pretty cleanly: For the file structure I’m planning something like: ~/.claude/CLAUDE.md # personal prefs, use plan mode for new features project/ ├── .claude/CLAUDE.md # router — what to read on startup, when to write what ├── architecture.md
decisions, patterns, system design
├── roadmap.md
phases and status
└── phases/ └── phase1/ ├── phase_plan.md # before work starts └── phase_summary.md # when phase is done The project CLAUDE.md basically tells Claude: load architecture and roadmap first, use plan mode before touching any new feature, write the phase plan before starting and the summary when done. Reason I care about structuring it properly — these are portfolio projects. I’m building things I want to actually understand and be able to talk about in interviews, not just ship and forget. Plan mode forces me to think through decisions before Claude writes anything, and the phase docs mean I always know what was built and why. Few things I’m genuinely curious about:
- Anyone doing something similar with the file-based memory approach, or a completely different system?
- The Frontend plugin and Superpowers plugin keep coming up — actually useful or overhyped?
- Any MCP servers that have actually changed how you work day to day?
- If you’re building portfolio stuff specifically, how do you make sure you’re actually learning and not just watching Claude code for you? Would love to see what setups people are actually running, especially CLAUDE.md snippets if you’re willing to share. submitted by /u/n3cr0n411
Originally posted by u/n3cr0n411 on r/ClaudeCode