Using Claude to help structure your file system

for people just starting, here's what I did to start organizing my file system after a few days of use. I have a little bit of coding background so I asked claude to treat my file system like computer architecture and follow SOLID principles. They are roughly summarized as follows:

- Separation of concerns — each file has one job

- DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself) — data lives in one place

- Single source of truth — no two files own the same information

- Load only what you need — frequently accessed files stay shallow and small

As example my claude.md file shrunk about 50%, it had grown from 30-40 lines to 100 or so. And the context file in another workspace went from 157 lines to 15. The goal isn't necessarily file reduction, it's efficiency and clarity.

I went step by step through each directory with Claude to clean up stuff. At the end I had Claude summarize the process for me to share. attached are pictures of the .md file for easy viewing and I included the actual .md file of the process. But I'll also list it below:

The Process

Every refactor follows the same pattern:

Audit — list every job the file or directory is currently doing
Identify what's wrong — duplication, mixed concerns, wrong location
Propose before acting — show the before/after and confirm scope
Execute in order — move files first, update references second
Verify — make sure all links and paths still resolve

The key question at each step: does this file have one job, and does it live where you'd naturally look for it?

Prompts Used

The actual prompts from this session, mapped to each process step.

Audit

"look at Claude.md architecture. analyse for separation of concerns and good computer architecture" "let's look at sound design context file first"

Identify violations

"looking at Claude.md Identity, workspaces and routing section. Is there overlap of function there?"

"as a computer system architect taking into account separation of concerns, DRY, and clarity, what is the most efficient format?"

"my concern is the ambiguity of the phrase workspace, will that be confusing?"

"if sound design directory is going to be a well structured and usable database, what's the best architecture for the technique-index"

"sounddesign directory is now flat. In a well designed system architecture how can we reorganize"

Propose before acting — each of the above generated a proposal; confirmation came as: "execute" / "good to go" / "ready to build"

Execute

"refactor sound design context.md and build master table with the normalized master table structure" "execute reorganization"

Verify — happened organically after each execution:

"is there any other reference to workspace in the repository?" "_new-clipping-workflow.md does not follow naming conventions of other files" "_new-clipping-workflow.md is not routed in the sound design context"

I'm still working on structuring my prompts better, but wanted to share my exact workflow

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