Quick Start
Setup for every path: connect your AI tool, then pick the path that describes you. Building from scratch continues into your first memory; invited users are done in minutes.
What You Need
- An AI tool with MCP support: Claude Code, Claude Desktop, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, n8n, or any MCP-compatible client
- Invited users need nothing more; “build your own” needs a GitHub account (or we’ll manage the repo for you on Expert)
Step 1: Connect your AI tool
Same for every path.
Claude Code
Run this once from anywhere — it registers aswritten across all your projects:
claude mcp add --scope user --transport http aswritten https://api.aswritten.ai/mcp
Open Claude Code in any project directory and run /mcp. Select aswritten to authenticate (opens a browser). Restart Claude Code so the connection takes effect.
Claude Desktop
Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector. Name it aswritten. Server URL: https://api.aswritten.ai/mcp. Press Connect and authenticate in the browser.
Two things have to be true for Claude Desktop to work properly. Both matter — neither alone is enough:
- A Project’s custom instructions must contain the perspective’s
ASWRITTEN.md(orCLAUDE.md) content. Step 2 covers what to paste depending on your path. A Project without the paste is just an empty container — Claude will see the aswritten tools but won’t know the workflow, conviction rules, or citation conventions. The experience will be flat.- You have to start every chat from inside the Project (sidebar → click the project → New Chat). Custom instructions only load for chats that start inside the Project. Chats started from the main screen connect to the aswritten tools but skip the workflow instructions, and the experience is significantly worse.
Other MCP-compatible tools (GitHub Copilot, Cursor, n8n)
Add an MCP server with URL https://api.aswritten.ai/mcp. Authenticate with your email. Restart your AI tool so the connection takes effect.
Microsoft 365 Copilot is a different product and is not MCP-compatible. If that’s all you have, install Claude Desktop.
Login vs. sign-up. When the browser window opens to authenticate:
- If you were invited to a team — log in with the email from your invite. You’re already on your team’s tier; there’s nothing to pick, and no card to enter.
- If you’re starting fresh — start an Expert trial to build your own (a card is required up front), or Team to roll out to others. The trial is the real product, not a tour: it lets you add your own knowledge, which is the entire point. See Pricing.
Step 2: Pick your path
Path A: I was invited to a team perspective
Your team admin has already set up the perspective — there’s nothing to scaffold, no first-memory interview, no GitHub App to install. You just need to point your AI at it.
For Claude Desktop:
- Sidebar → Projects → New Project. Name it for your team.
- Get the contents of your team’s knowledge repo
CLAUDE.md(orASWRITTEN.md). If you have repo read access, open it on GitHub. If you don’t, ask your team admin to paste it into Slack or email. - Paste the contents into the Project’s custom instructions.
- Always start chats from inside the Project (see Step 1 Desktop callout for why).
For Claude Code:
- Clone your team’s knowledge repo locally:
git clone <repo-url>. - Start Claude Code from inside the cloned directory. The system prompt loads automatically.
Then ask away. Type aswritten to load the perspective and ask whatever you’d ask a senior person on the team. Citations show where each answer came from. For question patterns that get good answers, see Asking the Perspective Well.
No GitHub access? That’s the common case. You don’t need GitHub to use the perspective — being added to the team is what gives you load/ask/
rememberaccess. GitHub only matters for merging the PRs that result from saving memories (the team admin usually does this) and for the Claude Code workflow that clones the repo locally.
Path B: I’m building my own perspective from scratch
Start an Expert or Team trial in the auth window from Step 1. Then in your AI tool, type aswritten. Claude walks you through:
- Connect GitHub — install the aswritten GitHub App and select which repos to connect (Expert: we manage the repo for you, no GitHub needed; Team: connect your own GitHub org)
- Initialize — scaffold the aswritten files (
ASWRITTEN.md, workflows) via a commit to your default branch - First memories — from your call transcripts if you have them (fastest), or an interview (next sections)
If you’re using Claude Desktop, also paste the scaffolded ASWRITTEN.md content into a Project’s custom instructions (same as Path A Desktop steps).
The fast path: start from your call transcripts
If you record your calls — Fireflies, Zoom, Google Meet, Gemini notes — you’re already sitting on the source material. You don’t have to write anything.
- Paste a transcript into the chat and ask your AI to draft a memory from it. It distills what the call actually holds — the decisions, positions, and reasoning, with who-said-what and the exact quotes preserved.
- Add your commentary before it saves. “What here is settled? What’s already out of date? What did you decide after this call?” Your annotation is what turns a record into a perspective.
- Repeat for your last handful of calls. Each one goes through the same draft → review → save → PR cycle. A working first perspective from five or ten transcripts is an afternoon, not a quarter.
Have months of recordings? Don’t go one-by-one. Ask your AI to look across the whole set, surface the recurring topics and pivotal moments, and draft a small collection of memories — one per theme, each carrying the key quotes from across the calls, every quote attributed to who said it, when, and which call it came from. You review the collection once, not every transcript — and citations still land on the original conversation.
Your AI working sessions are source material the same way. At the end of a Claude Code session where something real got decided, ask it to save a memory of what was decided and why — the session itself is the transcript.
Your first memory (Path B)
No transcripts handy? Claude interviews you instead — about your project, key decisions you’ve made, who’s involved, what’s in progress. Talk naturally; Claude drafts a memory document and asks you to approve it before saving.
What to talk about:
- What does your project/org do? Who’s involved?
- The 2-3 most important decisions you’ve made recently — and why, not just what
- What do new people always ask about? What takes the longest to explain?
- The stuff that lives in your head and never got written down
What happens after you approve:
- Extraction — runs during the save (~2-3 minutes). An LLM reads your memory and extracts structured knowledge: decisions, actors, relationships, how settled each claim is.
- PR opens — showing exactly what was extracted. Every fact traces back to your words. Review and adjust if needed.
- Merge — then reload the perspective. Ask a question about your project: if the answer cites your decisions with provenance instead of giving generic advice, it’s working.
From here the pattern repeats: decisions come up in conversation → Claude offers to save them → extraction → PR → merge → the perspective grows. Use introspect in interview mode to see which domains are thin and get targeted questions to fill them.
Coming from a sales call? Your first memory was already created during that conversation. Load the perspective, see what’s there, and build from it.
Adding teammates
On a Team or Organization plan:
- Add each teammate to your team (
manage-account) — this is what grants them access - Each teammate installs the MCP server (Step 1) and logs in with their invited email
- They follow Path A — on first load they immediately have everything the team has documented
Teammates can save their own memories. Every addition arrives as a PR, so knowledge is reviewable before it enters the perspective. Different people contribute different domains — your architect documents architecture, your PM documents strategy.
Multiple repos
aswritten works across repos and organizations. Use switch-repo to change which repo Claude is working with. Each repo stores its own perspective.
Troubleshooting
“aswritten isn’t responding / answers feel generic” — On Claude Desktop this is almost always the Project gotcha: custom instructions not pasted, or the chat started from the home screen instead of inside the Project. See the Step 1 Desktop callout. Otherwise, type aswritten explicitly to wake the connector, or check authentication (/mcp in Claude Code, Settings → Connectors in Desktop).
“The perspective is empty” — You haven’t saved any memories yet, or the PR hasn’t merged. Save your first memory and merge the PR.
“The perspective is sparse” — Check for pending shares to import (the AI checks automatically, or run import with no arguments). If not, use introspect in interview mode to identify what domains need memories.
“Extraction is taking too long” — It runs inside the remember call and typically takes ~2-3 minutes. If it seems stuck, check the tool output for errors.
“I merged the PR but the perspective hasn’t changed” — The AI caches the perspective. Ask it to reload explicitly, or start a new session.