1. Install and sign in
Accept your CRE Brain invitation first. Then sign in to CRE Brain and open Settings, then Connectors. The page has the steps for your assistant and the connector’s address, ready to copy.
In Claude (claude.ai or Claude Desktop), open Customize, then Connectors. If CRE Brain is listed, click Connect. If it isn’t, choose Add, then Custom connector, name it CRE Brain and paste the address. Sign in with your CRE Brain account and allow access. When Claude asks to use CRE Brain, choose Always allow. In ChatGPT (Business and Enterprise workspaces), open Settings, then Connectors, add a new connector, paste the same address, and sign in when asked. On Claude Team and Enterprise plans, an Owner or Primary Owner must add a custom connector to the organization once before members can connect their own accounts.
After sign-in, start a new chat. Claude normally selects CRE Brain when it is relevant; if it does not, open + → Connectors in the chat and turn on CRE Brain. Your firm must already have given you a CRE Brain seat, and the sign-in only opens the workspace tied to that seat. No seat yet? Ask your firm’s CRE Brain administrator to invite you.
Publication status. OpenAI and Anthropic are still reviewing our directory listings. Until they publish, add CRE Brain as a custom connector as described above. After that, you can also install it from the directory and sign in.
2. Recall firm knowledge
Ask in plain words. For example: “What do we know about Harborview Plaza?”, “Why did we pass on 88 Elm?”, or “What changed this week?” CRE Brain searches only what you are cleared to see and answers from what it reads. Each person sees only the files they can already open where the firm keeps them, administrators included. Email works the same way: a person sees only their own mailboxes.
Every answer names its sources: the document and the page or cell a figure came from, or the email by its subject, sender and date.
3. Sources and AI agents
Your firm connects the places it already keeps its work, such as SharePoint, OneDrive, Outlook and QuickBooks Online. Files and email are read from where they live, when someone who can open them asks. The Privacy Policy lists what is read from each source and what is kept.
AI agents do the recurring work of a role from those sources, such as a budget rollover, an exception list or an investor report. What an AI agent prepares is a draft. A person at your firm reviews, changes and approves it.
4. Remember and correct
There is nothing to file by hand. When you tell the assistant how your firm does something, such as how you estimate next year’s property tax, ask it to remember that, and it keeps the rule for everyone at the firm. It never keeps a document’s figures or anything about one person as a rule.
You can read the rules it keeps and supported guidance from earlier work, under Settings, then Firm memory. Anyone at the firm can change or remove a rule there. When an answer is wrong, tell the assistant, and it records your verdict on that answer.
5. Evidence and confidence
Every claim uses one of four evidence classes:
- Filed
- Supported by a document of record.
- Stated
- Said directly by a person positioned to know.
- Heard
- Secondhand information that remains visibly unconfirmed.
- Assumed
- The team’s inference, labeled for verification before reliance.
6. Knowledge your team can reuse
Teach CRE Brain a useful practice in chat, or set a company rule in Company memory. Company memory shows the rules and learned guidance your team can reuse.
When learning is enabled, CRE Brain reviews supported lessons from chats and workbook answers, edits and review. Later work can use an established lesson only while the person may access the records behind it. A lesson can refine a procedure; it does not approve a file, set a financial assumption or grant access.
7. Access and privacy
CRE Brain answers only from what you are cleared to see. If it cannot tell who you are or which firm you belong to, you get nothing rather than somebody else’s knowledge. We do not sell customer information, and we do not use a firm’s content to train AI models.
Results returned into Claude, ChatGPT, or another connected assistant become part of that conversation, which is then also covered by that assistant’s own retention and workspace settings. See the Privacy Policy for how data is handled end to end.
8. Help and administration
Workspace admins invite people from the Team page and connect sources such as Microsoft 365. What each person can read follows the permissions your firm already set where the files live; an admin role adds no document access. For access, retrieval, privacy, or security help, use the support guide or email paul@pacificsoftwareventures.com. Never send a password, invite link, MFA code, or sign-in token in a support request.