Reddit user shares Claude Code setup for portfolio projects

From manual workflow to structured Claude Code

A developer on r/ClaudeAI shared their experience moving from a cumbersome manual workflow to a more organized Claude Code setup. They previously used Claude.ai for personal projects with what they described as a "pretty janky system" involving constant copy-pasting between chats.

The old workflow

Their previous approach involved:

• One permanent "main chat" for planning architecture, phases, and build order
• Creating new chats for each feature implementation
• Manually copying implementation prompts between chats
• Pushing to GitHub and adding repo + summary as Project Knowledge
• Returning to main chat to repeat the process

They noted this was "exhausting" due to constant copy-pasting, re-explaining context, and manually maintaining summary files.

The new Claude Code structure

After exploring Claude Code, they developed this file structure:

~/.claude/CLAUDE.md # personal prefs, use plan mode for new features
project/
├── .claude/CLAUDE.md # router — what to read on startup, when to write what
├── architecture.md # decisions, patterns, system design
├── roadmap.md # phases and status
└── phases/
    └── phase1/
        ├── phase_plan.md # before work starts
        └── phase_summary.md # when phase is done

The project CLAUDE.md file tells Claude to:

• Load architecture and roadmap first
• Use plan mode before touching any new feature
• Write the phase plan before starting
• Write the summary when done

Motivation and approach

The developer is building portfolio projects they want to "actually understand and be able to talk about in interviews, not just ship and forget." They emphasize that plan mode forces them to think through decisions before Claude writes anything, and the phase documentation ensures they always know what was built and why.

Questions raised

The post asks several practical questions for the community:

• Whether others are using similar file-based memory approaches or completely different systems
• If the Frontend plugin and Superpowers plugin are actually useful or overhyped
• Which MCP servers have actually changed how people work day to day
• How to ensure actual learning rather than just watching Claude code when building portfolio projects
• Requests to see other people's setups, especially CLAUDE.md snippets