Skip to main content
Tillr Systems← Back to Site

Setting up AI tools properly

Claude Code and AI tools, set up properly for your team.

You are paying for the subscriptions. Most of the team uses them like a search box, and the one person getting real work out of them cannot quite explain how.

A setup that still gets used after the first week usually includes:

  • Written instructions the AI reads at the start of every session, so it follows your way of working instead of guessing
  • Connections to your email, files, calendar or code, with limits on what each one can change
  • A few repeatable jobs your team runs the same way every time, built from work they already do

Then a hands-on session where your team uses it on this week's work, not a demo.

You'll recognize this if

  • Everyone has an AI subscription and nobody could say what it saved last month
  • The answers sound confident and are wrong often enough that nobody trusts them
  • You re-explain your business to the AI at the start of every conversation
  • One person on the team gets good results and the method lives in their head
  • You are nervous about what it might do if you connected it to your email or files
  • Your developers write code with AI tools and the code review has not caught up

How we'd approach it

  1. 1

    We start from the work, not the tool

    We pick the few jobs that eat the most time each week and set the AI up for those first. A setup aimed at everything ends up used for nothing.

  2. 2

    We write down how your business runs

    Your terms, your rules, how you price and what you never say to a customer. The AI reads it at the start of every session, so it stops starting from zero and the results depend much less on who wrote the prompt.

  3. 3

    We set limits before connecting anything

    Read access where it only needs to read, a person approving anything that sends, pays or deletes, and passwords stored where it cannot read them. Then we connect it to the tools that matter and show your team how to use it on their own work.

What changes

  • Subscriptions nobody can tie to saved time

    A few jobs it handles well, and the team knows which

  • Re-explaining the business in every chat

    Instructions it reads every session

  • One person's private method

    A written setup the whole team uses

  • Afraid to connect it to anything important

    Connected, with limits on what it can change

We've done this before

Online education & technical training

Five years of answers, finally searchable

Years of an instructor's answers were spread across email, a course community and social groups. We put them behind a plain-English search that answers with a link to where each answer came from, and says so when it does not know. Those two rules, cite the source and admit when it does not know, carry into every setup we do.

Read the case study

Service marketplace operations

147 tangled automations, untangled

A team had layers of automations and nobody could say which still ran. AI tools wired into your systems need the opposite: a clear record of what each connection does, what it is allowed to touch, and how you would notice if it stopped working.

Read the case study

Common questions

Is this only for software developers?
No. Claude Code started as a tool for developers, but the same kind of setup works for operations work: drafting replies, pulling numbers out of files, keeping documents current. For development teams we also set up how AI-written code gets checked before it ships.
Which AI tools do you set up?
Mostly Claude and Claude Code, because that is what we build with every day and know best. We also work with ChatGPT and the AI features inside tools you already pay for, and we will tell you if what you have is already enough.
Is it safe to connect AI to our email and files?
It can be, with limits. We start with read-only access, keep anything that sends, pays or deletes behind a person's approval, and keep passwords and keys where it cannot read them. Some things should not be connected at all, and we will say which.
What happens when the AI tools change?
They change every month, which is part of why the setup is written down. Written instructions carry over to new versions, while connections sometimes need adjusting. Optional monthly support covers that as the tools and your business change.

This is one way into the custom business software we build. Most projects start with whichever piece is costing the most and grow into the others, so it is worth seeing the whole picture before deciding where to begin.

Other places people start

Different ways into the same system. Most projects begin with whichever of these is costing the most right now.

Start with thirty minutes.

Tell us what's slowing you down and we'll tell you what we'd build. How much scoping it needs before a quote depends on the job, and we'll be straight with you about that.

Or see how pricing works →