Configuration & Knowledge Management

Configuration and knowledge management is 12 percent of the exam, and it is the domain that turns one person's good prompting into a team's consistent output. Almost every item comes down to one question: which layer does this piece of context belong in? Standing instructions shape every conversation in a workspace. Shared project knowledge is the small set of sources a whole team draws on repeatedly. Everything else is pasted into the single conversation that needs it.

The exam's favorite trap is over-stuffing. Candidates assume more context is always better, so they load every document anyone might want and every rule anyone ever asked for. Shared context is not free. A superseded price list or a retired policy is worse than no document at all, because Claude will use it confidently and the reader has no reason to doubt it. The strongest answer often removes something, names an owner, or dates a source rather than adding more.

The idea that unlocks the domain: shared context is a maintained asset, not a folder. Unowned and never reviewed, it quietly becomes a liability.

Context lives in three layers. Standing instructions apply to every conversation in the workspace. Shared knowledge is reference material the whole team draws on. The conversation itself carries everything else. Pick the layer by asking how often the context is true.

• Standing instructions = always true. Audience, tone, house format, what to flag, when to say it cannot verify something. Behavior, not facts.
• Shared knowledge = reused source. Put a document there only if it will be referenced across many conversations by more than one person.
• Paste = this task only. A document you need once belongs in the message, not in the shared set.
• Never put a temporary instruction in the standing layer. It keeps applying long after the reason is gone.
• Upload when the source is static; connect when it changes faster than you can re-upload. Point-in-time documents get uploaded, living systems get connected.
• A connection inherits permissions, it does not widen them. Claude sees what the connecting account is already allowed to see, and nothing more.
• One authoritative copy per topic. Delete the superseded version instead of keeping both.
• Name sources so the right one is found: what it covers, who it applies to, and the date it took effect.
• If a request is asked the same way every week, save it as a reusable prompt with blanks for the inputs, so wording stops drifting between people.
• Every shared setup has one named owner and a review date. Shared ownership is no ownership.
• Test a configuration change by rerunning the two or three prompts the team actually uses, before and after.
• Onboard a colleague into the configuration, not around it: give access, then walk one real task through it.

Where candidates go wrong, and what the exam dangles as the tempting answer.

• The tempting wrong answer is almost always add more context. Adding a document has a cost, and adding a contradicting one makes output unpredictable.
• Stale beats absent in exactly no case. Missing context produces a question or a caveat. Wrong context produces a confident, quotable error.
• Two documents that disagree do not resolve themselves. Claude has no reliable way to know which is current, so retire one rather than adding a note.
• Standing instructions written as a wish list do nothing. Be accurate and be thorough are not instructions. Name the audience, the format, and the escalation rule.
• A one-off instruction parked in the standing layer silently reshapes every unrelated conversation afterward.
• Assuming a connected source means the whole system. It shows only what the connecting account can reach, so a colleague may legitimately get different results.
• Treating shared knowledge as an archive. It is a shortlist of what gets used, not a backup of everything the team owns.
• Moving confidential material into a shared workspace for convenience. The question is who can see the workspace, not whether the file is handy.
• Onboarding by forwarding a prompt. The colleague gets one good result, then drifts, because they never got the configuration behind it.
• Blaming the model when the layers conflict. Claude ignored my instruction usually means two layers disagree or the instruction is buried in a wall of text.
• Uploading a screenshot of a document when the readable source was available.
• No expiry and no owner. A setup nobody reviews is trusted longest at exactly the point it has become wrong.

CURATE is the order you set up and maintain a shared Claude workspace.

• C - Capture the standing rules. Write down only what is true of every conversation: audience, tone, format, what to flag.
• U - Upload what is reused. Add a source to shared knowledge only if it will be drawn on again and again, by more than one person.
• R - Reach for a connection when the source moves. If it changes faster than you can re-upload, connect it and accept that it shows only what your access allows.
• A - Assign one owner. One named person, one review date. Not the team.
• T - Trim on a schedule. Remove superseded documents, resolve contradictions, re-date what survives.
• E - Enable the next person. Onboard into the configuration and walk one real task through it, rather than handing over a prompt.

If a scenario feels unsolvable, you have usually skipped T or A.