Curating Knowledge for Claude

Claude is only as good as what you give it to read. A Project stuffed with every file from a shared drive produces vaguer, more contradictory answers than one holding five well-chosen documents. Curating knowledge is a skill in its own right: deciding what goes in, preparing it so Claude can use it, and keeping it current. The exam treats this as part of configuration, and scenarios often hinge on a knowledge problem disguised as a prompting problem.

Choose: what belongs in the knowledge

Ask of each candidate document: is it authoritative, current, relevant to the Project's purpose, and permitted to be here?

Include:

• the single current version of each policy, template, price list or specification the Project relies on;
• a glossary of internal terms, acronyms and product names;
• two or three examples of excellent past output, labelled as examples;
• brief context documents you write yourself: who the stakeholders are, what the Project is for, what has been decided.

Exclude:

• superseded versions and drafts, unless the task is to compare them;
• documents that contradict each other without a note saying which wins;
• vast archives "in case"; retrieval over noise returns noise;
• anything the Project's members are not all entitled to see;
• personal or sensitive data beyond what the task strictly needs and policy allows.

Prepare: make documents easy for Claude to use

Claude reads most formats well, but preparation improves both accuracy and retrieval.

• Name files descriptively, with a date or version: "Travel policy v4 (Mar 2026).pdf" beats "policy_final_FINAL.pdf". Claude sees file names and uses them to decide what to consult.
• Keep structure. Documents with clear headings are easier to search and to quote by section. Convert slide decks with heavy imagery into notes where the words matter.
• Prefer text over pictures of text. Scanned PDFs work when legible, but a text version is more reliable.
• Write a short context note at the top of the Project knowledge or in the instructions: what each document is for and which is authoritative when they overlap.
• Split very large documents into logical parts if only some sections are relevant, and say in the instructions which part covers what.
• Add a glossary. Internal jargon is the most common cause of Claude misunderstanding a question against company documents.

Understand how knowledge is retrieved

As Domain 4 explained, small knowledge sets are fully in view; large ones are searched for the passages most relevant to each question. Two implications for curation. First, documents written in the same vocabulary your colleagues use when asking questions are retrieved more reliably; a glossary bridges the gap. Second, duplicated or near-duplicated content competes with itself, so one good source per topic is better than three overlapping ones. If answers seem to miss something that is in the knowledge, instruct Claude to search explicitly for it, and consider whether the document's structure or naming made it hard to find.

Maintain: keep it current

Knowledge decays. The curation routine that works:

1. Name an owner for each Project's knowledge.
2. Set a review cadence (quarterly is common) and a trigger list: policy changes, price updates, reorganisations, product launches.
3. Replace, do not accumulate. When a document is updated, remove the old one.
4. Log changes with a dated line in the instructions so users know what moved.
5. Test after changes with three standard questions whose correct answers you know.
6. Collect misses. When Claude gives a wrong answer that the knowledge should have prevented, record it; patterns point to gaps.

Scenario: the HR policy assistant

An HR team sets up a shared Project to answer staff questions about policies. First attempt: forty documents uploaded from the HR drive, including three versions of the parental leave policy. Claude's answers cite different notice periods depending on how the question is phrased. Second attempt, after curation: twelve current policies with dated names, one glossary, one context note stating "Where policies overlap, the Employee Handbook v7 is authoritative", and instructions telling Claude to quote the section it relies on and to say when a policy is silent. Answers become consistent and checkable. The team adds a monthly five-minute review and a rule that any policy change goes to the Project owner the same day.

Checklist for a knowledge set

• One current, authoritative version per topic?
• Descriptive, dated file names?
• Glossary of internal terms included?
• Context note stating what each document is for and which wins on overlap?
• Nothing present that some members should not see?
• Owner, review cadence and change log in place?
• Three test questions with known answers used after every change?

Exam focus

• Curate for authority, currency, relevance and permission; fewer well-chosen documents outperform large archives.
• Descriptive dated file names, clear headings, text rather than images, a glossary and a context note make knowledge easier to retrieve and quote.
• Duplicate and contradictory documents degrade answers; replace rather than accumulate, and state which source is authoritative.
• Large knowledge sets are searched; phrase documents in the vocabulary users will ask in, and instruct Claude to search explicitly when needed.
• Maintenance needs an owner, a review cadence, a change log and standard test questions.