Nine habits we see in agencies that use Claude every week. Tick the ones your team already has; the rest are your next steps. This page is the two-minute check. The pages after it show how to put each habit in place, with prompts and templates you can copy.
The nine habits
Tick what’s true for your team today
ISetup
01
Team or Enterprise, not personal accounts, with no feedback ratings on client chats.
02
Brief, brand, voice and approved work, loaded once and shared with the account team.
03
Drive, Slack, Gmail, your tracker and Figma, each with a note of what it can change.
IIDay-to-day work
04
Context, task, format and an example of good, with questions invited first.
05
The full task with your tools connected, ending as a file someone can use.
06
Nothing reaches a client without someone who has read it and owns the decision.
IIIRepeatable work
07
Status reports, recaps, brief reviews and QA passes that anyone can run by name.
08
Drafts that are ready before you are, each checked by a named owner.
09
Timed before and after, with sped-up work priced by the job, not the hour.
0 to 3
Getting started
Start with 01 to 03. Everything else builds on them.
4 to 6
In the room
Claude is in the work. Make it repeatable with 07 and 08.
7 to 9
Running on it
Ready for agents that hold a whole job and check in where it counts.
Start withThe lowest-numbered habit you didn’t tick. Its page in this checklist has the steps, and most take an afternoon.
Kyoko Labs · The agency Claude checklist1 / 4
I · Setup, in practice
Seats, client Projects and connected tools
01Put client work on business seats
Do this
Move anyone doing client work onto Team or Enterprise. Under commercial terms Anthropic doesn’t train on your inputs by default; personal plans can, unless someone switched it off.
Have an owner turn off chat rating in Organization settings > Data and privacy. A thumbs up or down sends that whole conversation to Anthropic, on any plan.
Watch for
People keeping a personal account “for quick things”. Client material follows the quick things.
Start withA list of who touches client work and which account they use for it.
02Give every client a Project
Do this
Load the brief, brand guidelines as text rather than the designed PDF, tone of voice and approved past work.
Write short Project instructions: who the client is, their voice, what to avoid and who signs off. The template is in the Cowork field guide.
Share it with the account team; “Can edit” for the account lead, “Can view” for everyone else.
Watch for
Projects that go stale. The account lead owns each one and updates it when the scope changes.
Start withYour three biggest accounts. Test each with three real asks against work the client already approved.
03Connect the tools where the work already lives
Do this
An owner enables each connector for the organisation; everyone then signs in with their own account, so Claude only sees what that person can see.
Set each connector’s tool permissions: always allow the read-only tools, and require approval for anything that sends, edits or deletes.
Watch for
Connecting everything on day one. Each connector should replace a copy-and-paste someone does every week.
Start withThe two tools you copy and paste between most, and one line on what each connector can read and change.
II · Day-to-day work, in practice
Briefing Claude, handing it whole jobs and approving the results
04Brief Claude the way you’d brief a new hire
Do this
Four parts: who it’s for and why it matters, one clear task, the format you want back, and an example of good. The template is A1.
End thin briefs with a request for questions, so Claude fills the gaps with you rather than with guesses.
end withBefore you start, ask me up to 3 questions about anything the brief leaves open.
Watch for
One-line asks that get generic work back, followed by five rounds of edits. A two-minute brief is cheaper.
Start withThe brief template from A1, pinned in your team channel.
Kyoko Labs · The agency Claude checklist2 / 4
05Hand Claude whole jobs
Do this
Ask for the finished thing and say where it goes: the sheet, the draft email, the report in the client’s template.
Name the sources, so Claude gathers from your connected tools instead of from what you paste in.
examplePull every piece of client feedback on [project] from [folder], Gmail and #client-[name] into a sheet: where, what they asked, status, owner. Flag anything contradictory.
Watch for
Answers you paste somewhere else. They save minutes; the finished file saves the hour.
Start withOne weekly admin job that ends as a file, such as the client feedback tracker.
06Have a named person approve client work
Do this
Claude researches, drafts and offers options. A named person picks the idea, reads the room and approves anything that goes to a client.
Ask Claude to list its sources and its assumptions at the end of each draft, so the reviewer knows what to check.
Watch for
Polished drafts are harder to check than rough ones. About 4 in 10 US workers in a 2025 Stanford and BetterUp survey had recently been handed AI work that looked finished and wasn’t.
Start withA rule that nobody forwards a draft they haven’t read.
III · Repeatable work, in practice
Skills, schedules and an AI lead who measures results
07Turn what you repeat into skills
Do this
Do the task once with Claude, then ask it to save what worked as a skill: the sources, the format, the checks and the questions it asked you.
Share it with the team; on Team plans owners can add a skill for everyone.
askTurn what we just did into a skill called client-update. Include the sources, the format and the checks, and leave the client name as an input.
Watch for
Skills nobody owns. Give each one an owner and a date it was last checked.
Start withWhatever someone typed out three times last week.
08Put recurring work on a schedule
Do this
Create a scheduled task with a prompt, a folder and a frequency: hourly, daily, weekly or weekdays. It runs in the cloud even with your laptop closed, unless it needs local files.
Have it save a draft, not send anything. A named owner reads every run. Prompts for two schedules are in A2.
Watch for
Schedules that send messages or touch sensitive files. Anthropic advises against both.
Start withThe weekly client update, drafted for the account lead to edit before it goes.
09Name an AI lead and measure the hours
Do this
One or two people, chosen for curiosity over seniority, own the setup and time two or three workflows before and after, counting revision rounds as well as hours (A3).
If you bill by the hour, the time saved comes off the invoice. Price the deliverables that got faster by the job.
Watch for
Self-reported savings. They run high; a stopwatch doesn’t.
Start withA 15-minute show-and-tell every two weeks. Rolling this out to the whole team is covered in the Team AI Alignment Guide.
Kyoko Labs · The agency Claude checklist3 / 4
A1 · Brief template
Context: who this is for and why it matters. [client, audience, where it will be used]
Task: one clear ask. [what you want made or done]
Format: length, tone and shape. [e.g. three options, under 120 words each, in the client's voice]
Example of good: [link to or paste one piece the client already approved]
Sources: [files, folders or channels to use, and anything to ignore]
Before you start, ask me up to 3 questions about anything this brief leaves open.
A2 · Two scheduled tasks
Weekly client update · Weekly, Friday 8am · owner: [account lead]
Draft this week's update for [client]. From [tracker]: done, in progress and
blocked since last Friday. From #client-[name]: decisions, approvals and open
questions. Under 200 words, in the client's voice: done, next, what we need from
you. List anything you weren't sure about separately. Save it in [folder]/outputs.
Don't send anything.
Monday overview · Weekly, Monday 8am · owner: [studio lead]
Look across [tracker], #studio and [folder] and draft the week: what moved, what's
stuck, what needs me, and any deadline in the next ten days. Save it in
[folder]/outputs. Don't send anything.
A3 · Before and after timing sheet
Workflow
Timed by
Before: hours
Before: rounds
After: hours
After: rounds
[Monthly client report]
[name]
[Meeting recap and follow-up]
[name]
[Brief to first draft]
[name]
Copy pastes into a sheet’s columns. Re-time at day 45 and day 90.
Thirty minutes, free. We’ll go through the checklist with you and pick the two habits worth starting first. If it’s not a fit, you’ll still leave with the map.