The 10-Minute AI Onboarding: How I Get a New Assistant Up to Speed on Any Project

Every time I start a new AI coding session, I waste the first 15 minutes re-explaining my project. The stack, the conventions, the weird edge cases. Again and again. So I built a 10-minute onboarding flow that eliminates that ramp-up entirely. Here's exactly how it works. The Problem: Context Amnesia AI assistants don't remember your project between sessions. Even if you had a brilliant conversation yesterday, today's session starts from zero. Most developers handle this by: Pasting random files into the chat and hoping for the best Writing a novel-length prompt every morning Just accepting bad first answers All three waste time. There's a better way. The 10-Minute Onboarding Document I keep a single file called PROJECT.md at the root of every repository. It's written specifically for an AI assistant to read — not for humans. Here's the template: # Project: [Name] ## What This Is [2-3 sentences. What does this project do? Who uses it?] ## Stack - Language: [e.g., TypeScript 5.4] - Fram