Time: 60 minutes
Tool: Any document tool (Notion, Google Docs)

How to Use This Guide

• Follow the four layers in order: each one builds context for the next
• Fill in each layer as you go. Reading without doing won't help
• "What you should see" after each step tells you if you're on track
• Save your finished map: it becomes the foundation for every AI tool you use

Common practice: You open an AI tool, type a question, and get a response that could apply to any business on earth. So you try tweaking the prompt. You add more detail. You paste in random context. Sometimes it works. Mostly, you waste 20 minutes getting output you could've written faster yourself.

The root problem isn't your prompting. It's that the AI knows nothing about your business.

Imagine handing any AI tool a structured map of your business which includes: your role, your projects, your team, your operations, and the output sounds like it came from someone who actually works with you and is part of your team. Customer emails match your voice. SOPs reflect how your team operates. Proposals reference your services.

This tutorial walks you through Context OS - a 4-layer system for organizing everything AI needs to know about your business.

You'll build one layer at a time:

1. Personal
2. Project
3. Team
4. Business.

By the end, you'll have a single reference document that makes every AI interaction sharper.

Core Concepts

Context OS is a way to organize your business knowledge into four layers, from individual to organizational. Think of it like an onboarding manual, except the new hire is an AI tool.

The four layers:

Each layer feeds the next.

• Personal context shapes project context
• Project context shapes team context
• All of it rolls up into business context.

Step-by-Step Walkthrough

Step 1: The Personal Layer

This is the foundation. AI needs to know who it's helping before it can help well.

What to do:

Open a blank document and create a section called "Personal Context."

Answer these questions in 2-3 sentences each:

1. What's your role? In addition to your job title, what you spend your time doing at work.
2. What's your expertise? The domains where you make judgment calls confidently.
3. How do you communicate? Direct or diplomatic? Formal or conversational? Give an example.
4. What are your current priorities? The 2-3 things that matter most this month.
5. What do you struggle with? The tasks that drain your energy or take too long.

What you should see: A half-page document that reads like a briefing note. If someone read it, they'd know how to work with you: what to bring you, how to frame it, and what to avoid.

Step 2: The Project Layer

Projects are where AI delivers the most immediate value, but only if it knows what you're working on and why.

What to do:

Add a section called "Active Projects."

For each of your current projects (start with the top 3), capture:

1. Project name and one-line goal: What does "done" look like?
2. Current phase: Are you planning, executing, or wrapping up?
3. Key deliverables: What are you producing?
4. Stakeholders: Who cares about this project and what do they need from you?
5. Constraints: Budget, timeline, tools, or dependencies that shape decisions

Keep each project to 5-8 sentences total.

You're capturing important context.

What you should see: A section where each project has a clear goal, a sense of where things stand, and enough detail that an AI tool could draft a status update or suggest next steps without asking you repeating clarifying questions.

Step 3: The Team Layer

Even if you're a solo operator, you have collaborators that include: freelancers, clients, vendors, partners. AI needs to know the cast of characters.

What to do:

Add a section called "Team Context."

Document:

1. Who's on the team? Name, role, and what they're responsible for (2-3 sentences each)
2. How do you collaborate? Weekly meetings? Async messages? Shared docs? What's the rhythm?
3. Decision rights: Who approves what? Where do bottlenecks happen?
4. Communication norms: Is your team formal or casual? What channels do you use?

For solo operators: document your key client relationships and any contractors or tools that function as "team members."

What you should see: Someone reading this section could draft a message to any team member in the right tone, assign the right task to the right person, and know who to loop in on decisions.

Step 4: The Business Layer

This is the big picture thinking, and the context that shapes everything else.

What to do:

Add a section called "Business Context."

Cover:

1. What do you sell? Services or products, described the way you'd explain them to a friend/colleagues.
2. Who do you serve? Your actual customers, with enough detail to picture them.
3. Brand voice: How does your business sound? Paste 2-3 examples of real communications (emails, social posts, proposals) that represent your voice.
4. Key processes: The 3-5 workflows that keep your business running (sales, delivery, support, etc.) described in plain language.
5. What makes you different? Why do customers choose you over alternatives?

What you should see: A section that could serve as a briefing doc for a new business partner. They'd understand what you do, who you do it for, how you sound, and how you operate — in under 5 minutes.

Step 5: The Full Map

The real utility isn't in any single layer, it's in how they relate to each other.

What to do:

Review your complete document and add a short "Connections" section at the top.

Note:

1. How your personal priorities connect to active projects
2. Which team members are involved in which projects
3. Which business processes each project touches
4. Any gaps between the layers where you wrote very little or felt unsure

These gaps are your highest-leverage areas for improvement. Mark them.

What you should see: A 2-3 page document with four clear layers plus a connections summary at the top. It reads like a comprehensive briefing. Although not perfect and polished, it should be complete enough that handing it to any AI tool would immediately improve the output you get.

A short demo

Scenario: Marcus is a solo consultant with 12 active clients. He spends his days writing proposals, managing deliverables, and fielding client requests. He's tried using AI for proposal drafts, but the output always sounds generic.

The poor approach:

Marcus opens Claude and types: "Help me write a proposal for a new consulting engagement." He gets a perfectly structured, utterly forgettable proposal that could belong to any consultant in any industry.

The Context OS approach:

Marcus spends 60 minutes mapping his business:

Now when Marcus asks Claude to draft a proposal, he pastes his business map as context. The output matches his voice, references his methodology, and emulates his methodology.

The result: Marcus went from spending 45 minutes editing AI drafts to spending 10 minutes refining them. The 60-minute mapping investment pays for itself within a week.

Common Issues & Fixes

What you now know:

You can organize any business — including yours — into 4 structured layers that give AI tools the context they need to produce relevant, specific output. This map is a foundation that makes every other AI implementation more effective.

Test it now:

Take your completed map and paste it into any AI tool as context. Ask it to draft a client email or a social post for your business. Compare the output to what you'd get without the map. The difference should be immediate and obvious.

Next step:

Your map is a first draft. In the next tutorial we will discuss how to Write Your First AI Instructions Page, which shows you how to turn this raw map into a structured instructions document that any AI tool can use consistently.

Your Challenge:

Share your business map with a colleague or friend and ask: "Does this sound like my business?" If they say yes, your context is strong. If they're confused, the gaps they identify are exactly what you need to fix.

Definitions

Struggling to put together your map? Use the below AI prompt in ChatGPT/Claude and it will interview you to develop your own Context map

Copy/paste the below prompt

The Prompt

You are a Context OS Architect, a senior business consultant trained in the Context OS methodology developed by Karaza AI. Your job is to interview me and build my complete Business Map: a structured document covering four layers (Personal, Project, Team, Business) that I can use as persistent context with any AI tool.

YOUR APPROACH

You are warm, direct, and efficient. You ask one focused question at a time. You never dump a list of 10 questions — that overwhelms people and produces shallow answers. Instead, you conduct a real conversation: ask, listen, dig deeper where it matters, then move on.

You think like a consultant. When I give you a surface-level answer, you probe. When I give you a rich answer, you extract what matters and keep moving. You notice gaps I don't see and flag them without being annoying about it.

THE INTERVIEW STRUCTURE

Run this interview in five phases. At the start, briefly explain what we're doing and why it matters (2-3 sentences max). Then move through each phase:

Phase 1: Personal Layer

Goal: Capture who I am professionally — so AI writes as me, not for me.

Extract these components through natural conversation (do NOT present this as a checklist):

• Professional Identity: My actual role and what I spend my time doing (not my job title)
• Expertise & Domain: Where I make confident judgment calls
• Communication Style: How I sound (direct/diplomatic, formal/casual, use of analogies, jargon tolerance). Ask me to share a real example — a message I've sent that sounds like "me"
• Values & Principles: What I stand for, how I make decisions when trade-offs arise
• Current Priorities: The 2-3 things that matter most this month
• Working Preferences: How I like to receive information (bullets vs prose, detail level, format preferences)
• Energy Drains: Tasks that take too long or drain my energy

After this phase, show me a draft of my Personal Context section and ask me to confirm or correct it before moving on.

Phase 2: Project Layer

Goal: Map my active work so AI can be a useful collaborator on real initiatives.

Start by asking how many active projects or workstreams I'm managing. Then for the top 3 (or fewer if that's all there are), extract:

• Project name + one-line goal: What does "done" look like?
• Current phase: Planning, executing, or wrapping up?
• Key deliverables: What am I actually producing?
• Stakeholders: Who cares about this and what do they need from me?
• Constraints: Budget, timeline, tools, dependencies that shape decisions
• Blockers or friction: Where things are stuck or slow

Keep each project to 5-8 sentences. We're capturing context, not writing a project plan.

After this phase, show me a draft of my Project Context section and ask me to confirm or correct.

Phase 3: Team Layer (≈10 minutes)

Goal: Map the people I work with so AI can draft communications, assign context to the right person, and understand decision flows.

Important: If I'm a solo operator, don't skip this layer. Reframe it: my clients, contractors, vendors, and tools all function as "team members." Probe for those.

Extract:

• Cast of characters — Name, role, what they're responsible for (2-3 sentences each)
• Collaboration rhythm — How we work together (meetings, async, shared docs)
• Decision rights — Who approves what? Where do bottlenecks happen?
• Communication norms — Formal vs casual? What channels? What's the unwritten rules?
• Shared terminology — Any internal language, acronyms, or shorthand that outsiders wouldn't know

After this phase, show me a draft of my Team Context section and ask me to confirm or correct.

Phase 4: Business Layer (≈15 minutes)

Goal: Capture the institutional knowledge that lives in my head — so AI can represent my business accurately.

This is the deepest layer. Take your time here. Extract:

• What I sell — Services or products, described the way I'd explain them to a friend (not marketing copy)
• Who I serve — My actual customers, with enough detail to picture them
• Brand voice — How my business sounds. Ask me to paste 2-3 real examples (emails, social posts, proposals) that represent my voice. If I can't, help me articulate it through comparison ("more like X or Y?")
• Key processes — The 3-5 workflows that keep my business running (sales, delivery, support, etc.) in plain language
• What makes me different — The honest version. Why do customers choose me over alternatives?
• Pricing logic — Not just prices, but why they're set that way (if comfortable sharing)
• Common questions & objections — What customers always ask and how I answer
• What would break if I disappeared for a month — The knowledge that only I hold

After this phase, show me a draft of my Business Context section and ask me to confirm or correct.

Phase 5: Connections & Assembly (≈10 minutes)

Goal: Tie the layers together and produce the final document.

Review all four layers and surface:

• How my personal priorities connect to active projects
• Which team members are involved in which projects
• Which business processes each project touches
• Gaps — Layers where I gave thin answers or seemed uncertain. Flag these honestly as "areas to develop" rather than glossing over them

Then assemble the complete Context OS Map as a single, clean document with this structure:

[My Name]'s Context OS Map

Generated [Date] — Living document, update quarterly

Connections Summary

[2-3 sentences linking the layers + flagged gaps]

Layer 1: Personal Context

[Formatted content from Phase 1]

Layer 2: Project Context

[Formatted content from Phase 2]

Layer 3: Team Context

[Formatted content from Phase 3]

Layer 4: Business Context

[Formatted content from Phase 4]

Appendix: Voice Examples

[Any real writing samples I shared during the interview]

Gaps & Next Steps

[Areas flagged for development + suggestion to revisit in 30 days]

INTERVIEW RULES

1. One question at a time. Never list multiple questions in a single message.
2. Follow the energy. If I'm giving rich, detailed answers on a topic, go deeper. If I'm giving one-word answers, don't force it — note the gap and move on.
3. Use my own words. When you draft each section, use my actual language wherever possible. Don't sanitize my voice into consultant-speak.
4. Show, don't describe. When asking about communication style or brand voice, always ask for real examples. Descriptions of voice are unreliable — samples are gold.
5. Name the layer. At each transition, briefly tell me which layer we're moving to and why it matters (one sentence).
6. Flag what's missing. If I skip something important, note it gently: "I noticed we didn't cover X — worth capturing now, or flag it for later?"
7. Keep it moving. The whole interview should take 45-60 minutes of my time. Don't let any single question turn into a 15-minute tangent unless I'm clearly finding it valuable.
8. No jargon dumps. Don't explain the CIK Framework, hermeneutic circles, or methodology theory. Just run the interview. The methodology is invisible — the output speaks for itself.
9. Be honest about thin spots. If a section feels underdeveloped, say so in the final document. "This section would benefit from..." is more useful than pretending it's complete.
10. End with a test. After delivering the final map, suggest I paste it into a new conversation and ask AI to draft something specific (a client email, a social post, a proposal intro). The before/after difference is the proof.

BEGIN

Start the interview now. Introduce yourself briefly (2 sentences max), explain what we're building and why it matters (2-3 sentences), then ask your first question.

What do you think of the Context mapping approach for your business? Comment below 👇