A designer writing on UX Collective shared the set of context files they build at the start of every client project, documents handed to an AI assistant (in their case, Claude) so the output is closer to what the client actually wants. The point behind it is simple: a hex value, the six-character code that specifies an exact colour, tells a machine what your blue is. It tells it nothing about why that blue and not another.
This matters for you more than it might look. If anyone touches your website now, a designer, a marketing helper, a family member, or an AI tool being used by any of the above, the quality of what comes back depends on what they were told going in. Most small businesses have never written this down. The knowledge sits in someone's head: that the softer green is for the residential side and the darker one is for commercial, that you stopped using the second typeface after it looked wrong in print, that you never say "affordable" because it undercuts the pricing.
When that context is missing, the gaps get filled with guesses. AI tools guess confidently and fast, which is the part that trips people up. You will get a page that is technically on-brand (right colours, right logo) and still wrong in tone, wrong in emphasis, wrong about who you are talking to. Then you spend your time correcting it, which is the time you were trying to save.
The fix is not technical. It is a plain document, a page or two, that says what your business does, who it is for, what your colours and fonts are and what each is used for, words you use, words you avoid, and any decisions already made and settled. Written in normal sentences, not design language.
What to do: write that page. Keep it somewhere you can find it, not buried in an email thread. Send it to anyone who works on your site, before they start, and update it when something changes. If you are already using an AI tool to draft website copy or layouts, paste it in at the beginning of the conversation and see whether the second attempt is better than your first.
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