Module 1 · The Build Kit and your practice profile
The kickoff: tell Claude about your practice (no client information)
Now Claude learns about your practice. You will paste one prompt, answer eleven short questions about your license, your practice and how clients pay, and Claude will write a file called practice-profile.md. Every later stage of the build reads that file before it does anything, so the questions are asked once and never again.
Every question is about you and your practice. None is about a client, and the kit is written so that Claude never asks about one.
Why a profile comes first
A therapy practice website is not one standard thing. A solo clinician who is paid privately in one state needs a different set of pages from a group that bills insurance, sees clients online in several states and includes a prescriber. Your answers work like switches: they turn pages and notices on or off for the rest of the build.
The questions, and why each one is asked
These are the kit’s questions, word for word, so you can gather the answers before you start. Your license numbers and your supervisor’s details are the ones people most often have to look up.
| # | The question | Why it's asked |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Your license. What is your name as your licensing board lists it, your license type (the full title and the letters), each state you're licensed in, and each license number? | title and license-number rules differ by state and by profession, and pre-licensed clinicians have their own wording rules. |
| 2 | License stage. Are you fully licensed, or pre-licensed (an associate, intern, candidate, trainee or similar)? If pre-licensed: your exact title as your board writes it, your supervisor's name and credential, and the practice or employer you work under. | title and license-number rules differ by state and by profession, and pre-licensed clinicians have their own wording rules. |
| 3 | Your ethics code. Which professional ethics code do you follow — APA, ACA, NASW, AAMFT, another, or not sure? | the ethics codes differ on testimonials and on what a counselor's website must link to. |
| 4 | Practice shape. Are you a solo clinician, a group practice (how many clinicians), or do you prescribe (psychiatrist, psychiatric nurse practitioner, physician assistant)? | the page count, the team page and bios, and a medication-policies page. |
| 5 | Where you see clients. In person, online, or both? If in person, which city and state is the office in? If online, which states can clients be located in during a session, and is any of that through PSYPACT or the Counseling Compact rather than a license? | the where-I-practice statement, and whether a map listing makes sense. |
| 6 | How clients pay. Private pay only, in-network with insurance, or a mix? If in-network, which plans are you contracted with today? | the shape of the fees page. |
| 7 | Electronic claims. Do you, or a billing service working for you, send insurance claims or check benefits electronically? (Yes, no, or not sure.) | electronic claims are what make a practice subject to HIPAA. |
| 8 | Federal funding. Do you bill Medicare or Medicaid, or receive any other federal funding? (Yes, no, or not sure.) | two federal website notices and an accessibility deadline may apply. |
| 9 | Addiction treatment. Do you advertise treatment for addiction or substance use? | a separate federal notice may apply. |
| 10 | Free or reduced-fee offers. Will you offer a free first call, a sliding scale, or any discounted or reduced fee? | a free or reduced-fee offer carries a required statement in at least one state. |
| 11 | Your states, for the state flags. Do you practice in, advertise to, or see online clients located in any of these: California, Florida, New York, Texas, Washington, Illinois, Colorado? Which ones? | each of those states has a rule that changes what the site says or keeps. |
Several of these answers decide which notices your site has to carry and how your title has to be written, and getting one wrong quietly changes what the site says. The compliance lesson (Module 6) has the rule and the exact text.
Two things to hold on to while you answer. The answers are yours to change later: tell Claude and it updates the file. And nothing in the profile is a legal determination. It records what you said, so that Claude and the compliance lesson can tell you what to check.
Paste this into Claude
Two words in it you may not know. A Git repository is a folder whose version history Git keeps. A snapshot is a saved copy of the whole project at one moment, which you can always go back to; the kit tells Claude to take one at the end of every stage, so you never have to ask. With your project folder open on the Code tab and the kit in place, paste this and press Return:
The kickoff prompt
You're going to help me build and launch a website for my therapy practice, step by step, over several sessions. I'm a clinician, not a technical person, so keep everything in plain English and do the technical parts for me. No client information — a made-up example if you need one. To start: 1. Read your CLAUDE.md, then look in the .claude/skills folder and LIST the six skills by name with a one-line purpose for each (brand-strategy, web-architecture, copywriting, frontend-design, compliance-check, deploy). If any of the six is missing, tell me plainly which one and stop. 2. If this folder is not a Git repository yet, set one up and save a first snapshot, so my work is saved from here on. 3. In plain language, tell me the 7 stages we'll go through together. 4. Run the kickoff from section 4 of your CLAUDE.md: ask me the questions one at a time, in order, and wait for each answer. I may answer "not sure". 5. Write practice-profile.md exactly as section 4 describes. Read it back to me in plain words and let me correct anything. 6. Save a snapshot and stop. Stage 1 begins in the next session.
What to check: Claude named all six skills before asking anything. It asked one question at a time and waited, and it never asked about a client. When it read the profile back, every license number and state matched what you typed, and every question you answered “not sure” shows as unsure and appears under open questions, not as a guess. If anything is wrong, say so in ordinary words and ask Claude to fix the file.
What the finished file looks like
Claude writes practice-profile.md in the top level of your project folder, with the line No client information is recorded in this file. under its title and these five sections:
| Section | What it holds |
|---|---|
| 1. License | Your name as the board lists it, license type and stage, supervisor if pre-licensed, states and license numbers, any compact authorization, and your ethics code |
| 2. Practice shape | Solo, group or prescriber; in person, online or both; the office city and state; the states where online clients may be located |
| 3. Money | Private pay, in-network or mixed; plans; electronic claims; federal funding; any free or reduced-fee offer |
| 4. Flags | The switches Claude sets from your answers, each marked on, off, or (for the federal ones) confirm |
| 5. Open questions | Everything you answered "not sure", so nothing is guessed |
Answer “not sure”. The kit then treats those notices as “confirm with your billing adviser or a healthcare lawyer” rather than guessing, and Module 6 shows you what to ask.
Answer “prescriber” to the practice-shape question and the kit adds a medication-policies page to the plan. Claude will say “client” unless you tell it you use “patient”. One thing you may have seen: OpenAI’s “ChatGPT for Clinicians” offers a free individual business associate agreement only to MD/DO, NP, PA and pharmacists, not to psychologists, counselors, social workers or MFTs, and it is not the tool this course uses. The never-paste rule from Module 0 stands in this course either way.
Claude saved the file somewhere else. Ask: “Move practice-profile.md to the top level of this project folder, next to CLAUDE.md, and confirm where it is now.”
It lists five skills instead of six, or none. A file did not come out of the zip, or the kit is in the wrong place. Go back a lesson, copy CLAUDE.md and .claude across again, and paste the prompt again.
It asked all eleven questions at once. Say: “Please ask me one question at a time and wait for my answer.” It will start again from the first one you have not answered.
practice-profile.md is in your project folder. It lists your license, your practice shape and your flags, every “not sure” is recorded as unsure, Claude has saved a snapshot, and it is waiting for Stage 1. Next: who you help, in their words.
- The kickoff asks eleven questions about you and your practice, never about a client.
practice-profile.mdis read by every later stage, so you answer once.- “Not sure” is a good answer: it becomes an open question, not a guess.
- Your answers switch rules on and off; Module 6 is where those rules are explained.
- You can change any answer later by telling Claude.
Watch this step
Optional listening, and long (about 43 minutes, with sponsor reads): a conversation about marketing a practice as the person you are rather than as a brand. It is a values conversation, not a checklist, so save it for a walk. It’s from an independent creator — credited below, so go give them a follow.
Interpersonal Branding - Therapist Marketing That Aligns With Who You Are: An interview with Carr...
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