Claude keeps your files now — not just this one chat

The exact clicks

1. Open Claude and start a new Project (not a regular chat) — the option sits alongside your chat list.
2. Upload the files this work actually needs, and write your instructions once in the project's own instructions field.
3. Open a new chat from inside that project whenever you come back to the same work — it already has your files and instructions, nothing to re-paste.
4. Keep unrelated work in a separate project — files and instructions don't cross over between projects automatically.
5. If you hit the file limit, remove what the current chat doesn't need rather than starting a new project just to fit one more file.

What changes

• The real cap, verified before publishing: twenty files per project, five megabytes each.
• It won't share files with a project you didn't add them to — each project's files stay scoped to that project.
• It's not a chat you keep alive in the background — the saving is in not re-explaining or re-uploading each time you return, not in the project itself doing anything while you're away.

What it will not do

• This fits recurring work with the same files and instructions — a one-off question doesn't need a project.
• Files still count toward the model's context the same as anything else — a project doesn't make your files free to include.
• Anthropic's own limits here can move — check Claude's current project settings if this episode is more than a few months old.