Before you start, connect Claude Code to the client and install the import skill. Connect Claude Code to a client and Install the import skill cover both.

The steps

  1. Start Claude Code and ask for the import in your own words, naming the project and the client. For example: "Import the fault repair project into VSTA for Fernmoor Water."

  2. Claude checks that it has a connection to that client. If it has none, it stops and tells you. Make the connection and start again.

  3. Claude reads the source note for the project. If there is no note yet, Claude reads the project, writes the note, and shows it to you. Answer its questions and correct anything it has misread. Claude never changes the project's own files.

  4. Claude writes the import document in a scratch folder, outside the project's own folder.

  5. Claude sends the document to preview_import and tells you what the import would do: how many value streams, stages, practices, items and relations it adds, what it changes, and anything it will not do. Nothing in VSTA has changed yet. Read the import preview explains each part of the report.

  6. If the preview lists problems, Claude fixes the document and previews again. VSTA will not apply a document that has problems.

  7. When you are happy with the preview, tell Claude to go ahead. Claude sends the same document to apply_import. VSTA applies all of it or none of it, and answers with the same report.

  8. Open the client's map in VSTA to see the result. Every change appears on the Changes page under your email address.

Claude waits for you at step 7. If you do not say yes, nothing is written.

A worked example: Fernmoor Water fault repair

Fernmoor Water is a made-up water company. Its fault repair project is a folder of documents about how a reported fault becomes a finished repair. The documents name the steps the work goes through, the activities in each step, and the tools, knowledge and information the activities use. Some of the documents are older drafts.

The first time, there is no source note for this project, so Claude writes one and shows it to you. The note says which documents are current and which drafts to ignore. It also sets out how the project's ideas become VSTA ones, such as whether each step becomes a stage and each activity a practice. It says how the keys are built from the project's own headings and file names. Check the note before you let Claude go on, because every later import follows it.

The preview then reports what the first import would add. On a first import into an empty map there is nothing to update or keep, so expect only add counts, perhaps with items that match ones already in the map. Compare the counts with the project. If the project describes two value streams and the preview adds one, ask Claude why before you say yes.

Running it again

Run the same import again whenever the project changes. Claude uses the same source note and the same keys, so VSTA recognises what the first import made. An import of a project that has not changed adds nothing and changes nothing. If someone has changed a record in VSTA since the last import, the import leaves that record alone and tells you.