Ryan “RyMac” McKinney · USMC · 21 August 2026 · 3 minute read
You can build the empty version of this yourself tonight. A folder, 2 text files, 4 folders under them. I would rather you did that than paid anybody $5,000 for it. What I send instead is that shape with a real project already in it, because an empty template teaches you nothing.
I am going to give you the structure before I offer you anything, because a page that hides the answer behind an email box is the thing I am supposedly against. This is the ICM folder structure, and it is the entire template:
~/business/ ├── CLAUDE.md <- the map. read first, always ├── Context.md <- the desk. what we are doing today └── ops/ ├── clients/ ├── offers/ ├── sops/ └── archive/
Make those, and you have built it. That is not a teaser. That really is the thing, and it comes straight out of interpretable context methodology.
One more name you will run into. You may see people write .claude folder or ask about .claude folder best practices. It simply means a folder with a dot in front of its name, which tells your computer to keep it out of sight so it does not clutter the view. The dot is the only difference. What goes in it is what is described here.
11 lines is enough to start. It does no work. It points.
Say what this folder is, say that the desk file gets read before anything happens, and say the 2 or 3 rules you are tired of repeating. Mine has stayed between 77 and 137 lines across every version I have saved, and every time I made it longer the agent got slower to the point. The stripped down starting version is in the 11 line post.
4 headings, and you fill them in badly on the first pass:
What I am working on. Right now. Today. Not the mission statement.
What is already decided. So nobody, human or machine, re-opens it next week.
Where the material is. The path to the folder.
What is next. One line, written by whoever finishes.
This is the part I got wrong first, and it is why what I send is not blank.
You can hold an empty structure and still not know what the desk file is supposed to sound like on a Tuesday when the job is half done. Nobody learns filing from an empty cabinet. You learn it from a cabinet with somebody else's work in it that you then make yours.
So the kit is a website I already started. The plan is written, the homepage is half written, and the next job is sitting in the desk file waiting. You say 3 words and it turns the build into your own project. I built a converting site in one night out of exactly this shape.
1. A start page, so you are not guessing which file to open first.
2. The map.
3. The desk file, with the 4 headings already written.
4. The folder skeleton.
5. A 1 page setup sheet, which you can open immediately without waiting for an email.
6. A list of what to cancel, which is the file that pays for itself.
Run 1 real job through it. Not a test. A real one. Then add a line to the desk file when you finish, and do that for a week.
If your AI still forgets everything each morning after that week, something is wrong and it is probably that the desk file is not being read. The forgetting has a specific cause and it is fixable.
If you want to know whether any of this holds up before you spend the evening, I put the case against it in is the ICM folder system legit, accusations first.
The kit is 6 files. It takes 20 minutes. A start page. A map. A desk file. The folder skeleton. A setup sheet. A list of what to cancel. No card. No call. No course to buy.
Send me the folder system