The 7-phase project process

Describe your project to any AI chatbot

Open Claude.ai, ChatGPT, or Gemini and describe what you're building in plain English. Ask it to break the idea into phases and create a build plan.

Why: Planning with a chatbot first means Claude Code starts with clarity, not guesswork.

Ask it to write your CLAUDE.md

Tell the AI your tech stack, rules, and preferences. Ask it to generate a CLAUDE.md instruction file you can drop straight into your project root.

Why: This is your AI's memory. A good one eliminates 80% of repeated instructions.

Outline the skills you need

Ask the AI to create skill files for your key workflows — deployment, adding pages, database changes, testing, etc. Save them to .claude/skills/.

Run the pre-requisite skills checklist

Before building, make sure you have skills for: responsive design, security hardening, accessibility, error handling, and deployment. If any are missing, ask the AI to write them now.

Checklist: responsive · secure · accessible · error states · deploy-ready

Create a phased markdown file

Ask the AI to write a PHASES.md that breaks your project into numbered phases — what gets built first, second, third. Each phase should have a clear deliverable and acceptance criteria.

Why: A phased plan prevents scope creep and gives you checkpoints to celebrate.

Set your scope boundary

Write one line: "This phase does NOT include ..." List the features you are deliberately leaving out.

▶ Warning: Without a boundary, the AI will keep adding features and you'll ship nothing.