Anthropic's AI assistant — the underlying "brain" that reads, writes, reasons, and takes actions on your behalf. On its own, Claude is a generally smart, generally helpful assistant. Everything else in FOA's setup is a way of wrapping Claude with the right knowledge and tools so it behaves like a specialist rather than a generalist.

Claude is the engine everything else runs on at FOA. When you're drafting content, preparing for a coaching call, working through a financial question, or pulling together a report, Claude is the tool doing the heavy lifting. The more context you give it about what you're working on, the better the output — it's not a search engine, it's a co-worker that gets more useful the more it understands your task.

The Claude app you install on your Mac or PC. It has a friendly chat window and three modes — plain Chat, Cowork (works on your files), and Code (a small built-in coding view). Most people will do the majority of their work here.

Claude Desktop is the main tool most FOA team members will use every day. If you're not working in a terminal, this is where you'll be. It's approachable, doesn't require any technical knowledge to get started, and handles most of the tasks you'll need Claude for — drafting, reviewing, summarising, planning, and working with documents.

A mode inside Claude Desktop that lets Claude work directly on the files in a folder you choose, run scheduled tasks, and produce real deliverables like documents and reports. It's the non-technical way to get Claude working on actual files rather than just chatting.

Cowork is where most FOA team members will produce their Claude outputs — things like member communications, event materials, coaching frameworks, and internal documents. You point it at a folder, tell it what to do, and it works through your files. It's the mode to reach for when you want Claude to produce something you can save and share, not just read in a chat window.

Claude running inside the terminal (the black command-line window). It can read files, run commands, chain skills together, and follow complex instructions more reliably than Desktop. It's the more powerful — and more technical — version of Claude.

Claude Code is used by the small group of FOA team members who build and maintain the skills that everyone else uses. If you're not in that group, you won't need to use it directly — but you'll benefit from it every time you use a skill that someone has built and tested here. It's the engine room; most people work on the deck.

A library of around sixty pre-built skills, templates, and configuration files that sit on top of Claude, built by Kent. It ships in two flavours: FOS Complete (a .plugin file for Claude Desktop) and FOS Base (a folder for Claude Code). Think of it as "Claude with a business brain already installed."

Founder OS is the foundation FOA's Claude setup is built on. Rather than starting from a blank Claude, every team member is working with a version of Claude that already understands how a founder-led business operates — sales, marketing, delivery, coaching, finance, content. FOA has then layered its own specific skills and context on top. When Claude gives you a well-structured, relevant output, Founder OS is usually a big part of why.

A skill is a folder of instructions that teaches Claude how to do one specific thing well — for example, writing-copy, managing-revenue, or analyzing-text. Each skill contains a SKILL.md file plus optional subfolders for references, templates, and examples. Skills are the unit of value in Founder OS.

When you ask Claude to help with something at FOA and it responds with structured, on-brand, FOA-specific output, a skill is doing that work behind the scenes. Over time, FOA's own skills will cover things like member onboarding, coaching session prep, sales conversations, and event delivery — making consistent, high-quality outputs available to everyone without anyone needing to rewrite the instructions each time.

A shared format that lets every skill "see" and call every other skill. Without SKP, skills sit in silos and Claude often fails to find the right one. With SKP, skills form a connected web — ask for one thing and Claude pulls in related skills automatically.

SKP is what makes FOA's skill library work as a system rather than a pile of separate tools. You don't need to know which skill to call — Claude works that out. What matters to you is that any skill FOA builds needs to follow the SKP format. If you're ever asked to help document or structure a new FOA skill, following SKP is the one rule that keeps it usable by the whole team.

A special master skill that reads the SKP and decides which other skills to load for any given task. It is the conductor of the orchestra — the thing that routes Claude to the right skill so you don't have to specify it yourself each time.

navigating-skills runs in the background every time you use Claude at FOA. It's why you can describe a task in plain language and Claude finds the right approach without you needing to name a specific skill. It's also the first thing FOA's Claude setup reads at the start of every session — which is why it should never be removed or modified without understanding what it does. If Claude ever seems to stop behaving smartly, this is the first place to check.

A folder inside Founder OS that holds company-wide context — ICP, team structure, brand voice, offer documents, tech stack, and more. Anything stored here is automatically available to every skill. It's how Claude knows who FOA is, who it serves, and how it communicates.

org-config is why Claude at FOA produces outputs that sound like FOA rather than a generic business. It holds FOA's member profile, brand voice, offer structure, and coaching philosophy. When you notice Claude already understanding the context of your work without you having to explain it, that's org-config doing its job. If you're ever asked to update or contribute to these files, it's important work — it improves the quality of Claude's outputs for every person on the team.

A universal adapter that lets Claude connect to outside software — CRM, email, Slack, calendars, Dropbox, Kajabi — without custom code for each connection. Each tool publishes an "MCP server" and Claude plugs in, meaning it can read, write, and act inside those tools directly.

MCP is what allows Claude to work inside the tools FOA already uses rather than alongside them. Connected to Kajabi, Claude can pull member data. Connected to Slack, it can summarise threads or draft responses. Connected to the CRM, it can research prospects before a call. As FOA's MCP connections grow, Claude moves from being a writing assistant to being an active part of how the business operates day to day.

A plain-text file format with very light formatting — headings, bold, lists. It's what Claude reads most reliably and produces most efficiently. Markdown files are lightweight, easy to version, easy to share, and straightforward for Claude to work with in future sessions.

At FOA, Claude outputs are saved as .md files first. This is the team's standard — it keeps files lightweight, makes them easy to find and reuse, and builds up a library of FOA's work that Claude can draw on in future. If you're ever unsure what format to save something in, markdown is the default. Word documents, PDFs, and slides are produced from markdown when they're needed for sharing externally.

The language web pages are written in. In FOA's Claude setup, markdown outputs are paired with an HTML version — a styled, easy-to-read file that opens in any browser and renders cleanly in email, Teams, or WhatsApp. Same content, polished presentation.

HTML is how FOA team members share Claude outputs externally — with members, partners, or other parts of the business. Where the markdown is the working file, the HTML is what you send. You don't need to know how to write HTML; Claude produces it automatically alongside the markdown. If something needs to look professional and be shareable, the HTML version is what you reach for.

A folder inside Founder OS where every in-progress piece of work lives — one subfolder per project. Claude reads from here and writes back here, which means it can pick up where it left off across sessions. The structure is deliberately simple and manual.

Active projects is where your current Claude work lives while it's in progress. If you're working on a member campaign, an event plan, or a coaching resource, it gets its own folder here. Saving your work to the right folder means Claude can return to it next session without losing context. One project, one folder — that's the rule that keeps things organised across the team.

A folder inside Founder OS where finished projects are moved once done — a simple drag from active projects. Work here is archived but still searchable and available as context for future Claude sessions.

Completed projects is where FOA's institutional knowledge accumulates. Every finished member campaign, workshop design, sales script, or coaching plan that gets moved here becomes something Claude can reference the next time a similar task comes up. Over time this folder becomes one of FOA's most valuable assets — a searchable library of the team's best work, available to everyone, permanently.