Build a Vendor and Contract Knowledge Project in Claude

1. Go to claude.ai and sign up with your email or Google account.
2. Confirm your email if asked.

What you should see: A blank chat window with a sidebar showing recent conversations.

1. Open Projects from the sidebar or account menu.
2. Click "+ New Project."
3. Name it something clear, like "Vendor Contracts," and add a one-line description.

What you should see: A new project page with sections for instructions and files.

1. Open the instructions panel (usually an edit icon next to the instructions section).
2. Write out what you want Claude to do by default: flag auto-renewal clauses, note cancellation notice periods, and call out anything unusual compared to standard vendor terms.
3. Save it.

What you should see: Your instructions saved and visible at the top of the project, applied automatically to every new chat inside it.

1. Click the file upload icon in the project's Files section.
2. Upload each vendor contract as a PDF, along with a simple list of your active vendors and what each one provides.
3. Keep it to 5-10 focused documents rather than everything you've ever signed. A project has a document budget of roughly 200,000 tokens (about 500 pages), and loading it up with irrelevant files just makes retrieval less accurate.

What you should see: Each file listed in the project with its name and size. Troubleshooting: Individual files are capped around 30MB. If a scanned contract is unusually large, try re-exporting it as a smaller PDF before uploading.

1. Start a new chat inside the project.
2. Ask a question that references the uploaded contracts directly, without re-explaining what they are.

What you should see: An answer that cites specific terms from the actual contract text, not a generic answer about vendor contracts in general.