Team Setup Guide

How to roll out the Claude Code Playbook to your team.

Why Standardize?

Without shared conventions, every developer has a different Claude Code experience:

Different prompting styles → inconsistent code quality
No hooks → type errors caught at build time instead of edit time
No CLAUDE.md → Claude learns your stack from scratch every session
No skills → everyone reinvents the same workflows

Standardizing saves 10-20 minutes per developer per session. For a team of 5, that’s 1-2 hours daily.

Rollout Plan

Phase 1: CLAUDE.md (Day 1)

What: Add a CLAUDE.md to every active project repository.

Choose the right template for each project’s stack
Customize sections to match your team’s conventions
Commit to the repo — it’s project documentation, not personal config
Review in a team PR so everyone aligns on conventions

Impact: Immediate. Every session starts with shared context instead of guessing.

Phase 2: Hooks (Day 2-3)

What: Install hooks globally for all developers.

Share the hook scripts: copy to a shared location or include in your dotfiles repo
Share the hooks-example.json configuration
Start with just ts-check.sh — it has the highest impact-to-effort ratio
Add more hooks incrementally as the team gets comfortable

Impact: Type errors caught at edit time. Formatting issues caught before commit.

Phase 3: Essential Skills (Week 1)

What: Install the essential skill pack for all developers.

Recommended first skills:

/check-env — eliminates “works on my machine” problems
/handoff — enables clean session handoffs and async collaboration
/deploy — standardizes the deployment checklist
/code-review — consistent review format across the team

# Add to your team's setup script
for skill in check-env handoff deploy code-review; do
  cp -r playbook/skills/$skill ~/.claude/skills/
done

Impact: Shared workflows. Every developer follows the same deployment checklist.

Phase 4: Advanced Skills (Week 2+)

What: Add skills based on team needs.

Team Need	Skills to Add
TDD culture	`/test-first`, `/refactor`
Security focus	`/security-check`, `/dependency-audit`
Complex features	`/writing-plans`, `/executing-plans`, `/brainstorming`
Release management	`/changelog`, `/pr-batch-review`
New team members	`/explain`, `/deep-explore`

Impact: Domain-specific workflows that match how your team actually works.

Configuration Strategy

Global vs. Project-Local

Type	Location	Use For
Global	`~/.claude/`	Skills and hooks that apply to all projects
Project	`.claude/` (in repo)	Skills and hooks specific to one project
Project	`CLAUDE.md` (in repo)	Rules and conventions for the project

Rule of thumb: If it’s about “how to use Claude Code” → global. If it’s about “how to work on this project” → project-local.

Settings Management

For teams, consider a shared settings template:

# In your team's dotfiles or setup repo
claude-team-config/
├── settings.json          # Shared settings template
├── hooks/                 # Shared hook scripts
├── skills/                # Team-standard skills
└── setup.sh               # Installation script

Each developer copies from the shared template and adds personal customizations.

Scaling beyond 20 developers? See the Enterprise Governance guide for SSO, managed policies, Compliance API, and audit trail setup.

Measuring Impact

Track these metrics before and after rollout:

Metric	How to Measure
Session success rate	% of sessions that complete the task without starting over
Time to fix bugs	From report to merged fix
Type errors in PRs	Count of TypeScript errors caught in CI (should drop to zero)
Build failures	Count of OOM or compilation failures (should drop)
Developer satisfaction	Survey: “How productive do you feel with Claude Code?”

Common Objections

“I don’t want to change my workflow” You’re not changing your workflow — you’re documenting it. CLAUDE.md just tells Claude the conventions you already follow.

“Hooks slow me down” The ts-check hook takes 2-5 seconds. A type error caught at edit time vs. build time saves 10+ minutes.

“Skills are too prescriptive” Skills are guides, not enforcements. /deploy reminds you to check env vars — it doesn’t stop you from deploying without them.

“My project is different” Every project is different. That’s why we have 9 templates covering TypeScript, React, Node, Python, Go, Rust, Mobile, DevOps, and full-stack. Customize from the closest match.

Maintenance

Monthly: Review tasks/lessons.md across projects. Promote recurring lessons to CLAUDE.md.
Quarterly: Review and update CLAUDE.md templates. Remove outdated conventions.
On new tool adoption: Add hooks and skills for the new tool. Remove deprecated ones.
On new team member: Walk through CLAUDE.md and installed skills. Have them read the getting started guide.