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Day 36 of 52 · about 15 min · Safety · Bonus

Roll Claude Code out to your team

When each developer sets up Claude Code alone, nobody knows which rules apply. Shared settings in the repo give the team one starting point; managed settings hold the rules nobody may switch off.

You’ll finish with

  • Each team rule placed in shared, local or managed settings
  • A teammate guide from /team-onboarding
  • A launch message drafted from Anthropic’s communications kit

You’ll need

  • A shared team repository set up for Claude Code (the practice project works)
  • For managed settings: an admin of your Team or Enterprise plan, or of each machine
Start from the practice project as of Day 35 (.zip, 46 KB)

Before you start

Tell us about your setup and the steps change to fit it. Your answers stay in this browser, and you can change them at any time.

Which system are you on?

Commands differ between systems. Pick the one you’ll run Claude Code on.

The steps

One step at a time. When a step’s check matches, tick it and the next one opens.

0 of 5 steps done0%

  1. Step 1 of 5: Decide where each rule lives

    Sort each rule into one of three places.

    .claude/settings.json

    • Committed: team permissions, hooks, plugins

    .claude/settings.local.json

    • Yours only, kept out of git

    Managed settings

    • Deployed by your organization; nothing overrides it
    Lists like permissions.deny merge: lower files can add entries, never remove managed ones.

    Check it worked

    You can name one rule your team wants in each column.

  2. Step 2 of 5: Commit the shared setup

    Put the team’s defaults in git and keep personal files out.

    your-project/

    • CLAUDE.mdteam instructions
    • .mcp.jsonshared MCP servers
    • folder .claude
      • settings.jsoncommitted
      • settings.local.jsonnot committed
      • folder skillscommitted
      • folder hookscommitted
    What a teammate gets by cloning. Some of it waits until they trust the folder.
    Terminal
    git ls-files .claude CLAUDE.md

    Check it worked

    The list includes .claude/settings.json and not .claude/settings.local.json.

  3. Step 3 of 5: Put the non-negotiables in managed settings

    Admins deploy policy that lower settings can’t override.
    managed-settings.json
    permissions.deny: ["Read(./.env)", "Read(./secrets/**)"]
    Claude’s file tools can’t read these files
    permissions.disableBypassPermissionsMode: "disable"
    Nobody can switch to bypass permissions mode
    availableModels: ["opus", "sonnet"]
    Only these models can be picked
    enforceAvailableModels: true
    Default also resolves to a listed model
    Example keys from the docs.

    Deliver it from the claude.ai admin console (Team and Enterprise), MDM, or a system-folder file listed in the admin setup guide.

    Check it worked

    On a test machine, /status shows Enterprise managed settings on the Status tab’s Setting sources line.

    If it didn’t work

    /status shows no managed source

    Check the file path for that system, or that the console policy is saved. Restart Claude Code: it fetches console policy at startup.

  4. Step 4 of 5: Generate a teammate guide

    Turn your recent use into a guide for a new teammate.
    In Claude Code

    You type: /team-onboarding

    What happens: Claude reviews your sessions, commands and MCP servers from the past 30 days and writes a markdown guide.

    What happens: On a claude.ai plan, you also get a share link.

    Run it in a project you have used for real work.

    Check it worked

    You have a guide a teammate can paste as their first message. Pin it in your team channel.

  5. Step 5 of 5: Draft the launch

    Start from Anthropic’s kits and rewrite them for your team.

    Communications kit

    • For admins and leads
    • Draft launch message, tips and FAQ answers

    Champion kit

    • For engineers already using it
    • Answer questions with the prompt you used
    Both are Claude Code docs pages.

    Work through the communications kit’s “Before you send” list. Give the champion kit to early users.

    Check it worked

    Your draft names one real first task from your codebase and the channel for questions.

Finish · 5 of 5 steps to go

Your team starts from the same setup

Review shared-settings changes in pull requests, like code.

What you’ll have checked

  • /status shows the managed source
  • A guide and a launch draft are ready

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Claude Code for your team

Want Claude Code set up across your team?

HorizonLux sets up and repairs Claude Code for teams: CLAUDE.md rules, hooks that enforce them and reviewed MCP servers. Book a free call to talk it through.

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Questions

Questions about Day 36

Can developers override managed settings?

No. Nothing lower overrides them, though a few security keys accept a stricter value from lower down.

Sources

Checked against the official Claude Code docs on .

Independent resource, not affiliated with Anthropic. HorizonLux wrote this lesson; Claude Code is made by Anthropic.